


Don't You Want to Get Out of Cape Cod Tonight?

by allegheny



Series: Lobster's Claws As Sharp As Knives [1]
Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: 2012 CCBL Season, Cape Cod Baseball League, College Baseball, Hand Jobs, Harwich Mariners, Host Families, M/M, Philadelphia Phillies, Pining, Shower Sex, Summer Love, baseball thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-08 07:37:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 22,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21472402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allegheny/pseuds/allegheny
Summary: It's not right, but it's now or neverAnd if I wait, could I ever forgive myself?Second-rate D1 college freshman Rhys Hoskins was going to make the best of his lucky break getting recruited to play in the best collegiate summer baseball league in the country.Then, Aaron Nola walks in.Out on the Cape, on the verge of adulthood, one surreal summer is their last chance before real life must start.
Relationships: Rhys Hoskins/Aaron Nola
Series: Lobster's Claws As Sharp As Knives [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1566925
Comments: 23
Kudos: 17





	1. The Call

**Author's Note:**

> The Cape Cod League is [the premier collegiate league in the country](https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel/2019/07/16/this-baseball-where-grass-real-and-price-right/0Fekh3JgTIraNQBahz7LjK/story.html) and it's got its own legend. 1 in 5 major leaguers have played on the Cape.

Here's how it happens.   
The call comes mid-April, the day after Rhys has a pretty mediocre game against New Mexico State where the only thing he gets is a walk. Of course, he tries not to let that stuff get to him. He's been told that a lot — baseball's about failing, and you have to trust the process. But it's really easier said than done. In high school you're hitting more often than not ; and then, you get to college, and all of a sudden things aren't quite so easy anymore. It's an adjustment he thinks he's starting to make, but he can't help feeling frustrated when he can't get that RBI, or even that elusive hit.   
But there's always the next game, and it's the middle of the series against New Mexico State, so there's two more games to even it out after the two losses. Wipe the slate clean. Get back on that horse. Confidence: it's key.

But all of that is a whole lot of talk. Actually believing it is another thing altogether.   
So when Coach Reggie grabs Rhys for a quick talk in his office during lunch, he's pretty surprised with what he actually gets told between two bites of his chicken-n-avocado sandwich. 

"So. I just got a call this morning from Steve Englert.” Reggie says, sipping from his coffee mug. 

Rhys has no idea who that is, and Reggie seems to see the confusion on his face.

"He's the manager of the Harwich Mariners." He explains immediately. "In the Cape Cod League, and he would like to know if my star freshman would be interested in playing on the Cape this summer."

At first, Rhys isn't sure he heard right. 

"Me?" He asks, raising his eyebrows. 

Reggie sighs good-heartedly, leaning back into his chair and folding his hands together. 

"Do I have another star freshman, Rhys?"

Well, maybe not. As annoyingly down on himself as Rhys gets after a bad game, he knows he's in the running for WAC freshman of the year. He'll probably make the all-WAC team, actually. And he has the most homers on the team. It's just—

“The actual Cape Cod League?” Rhys checks. You never know. Reggie could be talking about something else. He doesn't want to get too excited. I would be embarrassing. 

Reggie just smiles, somewhat fondly, gives Rhys that fatherly look he had on his face when Rhys told him no other college had offered him a scholarship. 

“With the wood bats, and the pro scouts, and everything. The best summer league in the country, Rhys.”

Rhys just stares at him. Wow. He can't quite process it. He wasn't even drafted out of high school, barely a year ago, and now he's apparently good enough to play in the most prestigious amateur league in the country, where only the most elite college players could hope to parade to build themselves a case for the majors. 

"I'll be honest, Rhys" Reggie smirks, obviously amused at Rhys's blank face. "I think you should go."

So Rhys doesn't even hesitate. He calls his dad. And the next day, he tells Reggie to give his commitment to Harwich.

The Hornets get to the finals, but Fresno State stops them dead in their tracks. 

But Rhys can't be too disappointed.   
He's packing his bags, and he's flying to Boston.


	2. Aaron Nola, LSU Freshman

Rhys has been on the Cape for two days when LSU gets kicked out of the NCAA Tournament in the super regionals by Stony Brook.

His host family is just great. They live in Harwich Port, just a five minute bike ride from the beach. The house isn't too big, but it sure is cute, with the white siding and the weathered grey shingles, and the deep blue shutters that actually shut, and the lavender bushes in the backyard dancing in the seaside air.  
Rhys knows the ocean ; he's from the Central Valley, but he's also from California, and he's had a car for a year, so sure, he's been to the beach plenty of times. But this is different. Nantucket Sound is quiet and flat almost, lapping at the white sand of the small beaches and the white boats floating in the harbor, and the tiny, quaint town is overflowing with vetch and goldenrod, between washed-out, salt-beaten wooden fences drawing jigsaws in the tiny plots of land along the side streets.

It's like a perfect picture of New England, like in the books and the movies. On the first night, the day after his arrival at Logan airport early in the evening, his host mom came back from the fishmongers with two enormous brown lobsters, still live. The two kids, a boy and a girl, eight and eleven, looked up at his face with jeering grins, waiting for a reaction. Obviously, a lot of the boys the family had over in the summer were from the Inland South, and the Midwest, and, like Rhys, had never gotten to hold a fresh lobster before.  
They boiled the two of them in a huge pot, and all sat at the table as Rhys vainly tried to free the crustaceans from their shell.  
The meal was delicious; of course, Rhys intended to cook for himself through the summer, but it was a nice gesture to give him a full welcome dinner like that.  
After food, Rhys helped clean up, and followed the children in the garden as daylight waned, and helped the daughter with her softball batting stance, tossing balls back and forth with the two kids til it became a little too dark and chilly and they all retreated inside.

He would cycle with the graciously lent bike to get around, but Ms Bradford insisted on dropping him off at Whitehouse Field for his first workout. There were a few of them on the Cape already, who came from smaller schools, who'd dropped from the post-season pretty fast.

Coach E was a ruddy-cheeked middle aged guy who greeted all eight of them in a team-branded training top with the pullover zipper pulled all the way down.

"I only got three rules for you all that I'll repeat again when the annoying big-shots in the tournaments get here. Show up on time, pay attention to what we're trying to teach you, and play your ass off."

He seemed like a solid dude; and since he couldn’t exactly run a full workout with less than ten guys, he had them all do warmups and throws, wandering around the field, not-so-subtly evaluating all of them.  
By the end of the day, Rhys had gotten to know a few of his new teammates, and when they all sat down together later that day, at a table at Ruggie's Breakfast and Lunch, in their brand new team t-shirts and uniform pants, he could put names on everyone.  
They shared about the side jobs they were taking up — it was a Cape League tradition to work on the side, though Rhys was sure few of them actually needed the money, since they weren't paying any rent at all. But he'd landed a landscaping job mowing lawns and trimming hedges, and he felt good about the prospect of paying for his own food and making himself useful outside of baseball. He usually counseled for a muscular dystrophy charity in the summer, so it felt a little bit empty to just be playing baseball this time. At least, if he had a job, he felt like he wasn't slacking off, because to be fair, baseball was never a grind for him: he always had fun playing.

Grant Gordon, a sophomore at Missouri State who had pitched in Harwich the year before, had gotten a job right there at Ruggie's, which was the Mariners' prime hangout spot pre-game, apparently.

"You should have been there last year, when we done won the championship!" Gordon said between two bites of his sandwich, his Ozarks accent peeking out. "That was a kick-ass summer. Dude, that team was so good. We gonna have a couple guys, they're gonna be coming back, besides me. I wish Austin Nola was back but he was a senior last year... got drafted and all that. We gonna get his little brother, though. Aaron, right?"

"Yeah" Trey Mancini from Notre Dame nodded. "He's been lights out, man. He has this curveball... it's like, the devil, man, he's nasty. I couldn't hit it at all, couldn't even begin."

"Well, I sure hope he's as fun as Austin, cause that guy was a hell of a lotta fun. Tigers just got done kicked out, right? So, him and that other LSU guy should be up here in the next couple days.”

Gordon had a few recommendations about Harwich: where the bar where you could drink while underage was, what the best beaches to hang out after-hours were, the party spots where you could get lucky, and how to pick up the local daughters of rich tourists. Rhys zoned out at that point, for obvious but undisclosable reasons.

JaCoby Jones arrives on the Cape late the next day. He’s a big old Okie with big ears and a buzzcut, and he’s got more information about Aaron Nola.

“I think he’s getting here tonight.” He says at practice on June 12th. “You should totally call him Baby Nola, he hates it.”

Everyone is interested, because by now everybody knows about Austin Nola’s exploits involving a Harwich girl, a boat, and a whole lot of Miller Lite.

“Oh Jeeze. Yeah, don’t expect that from Aaron. I think I’ve seen him swear like, twice. He’s a good Christian Momma’s boy.” JaCoby smirks. “He’s pretty much the polar opposite of Austin. But you know, he’s super chill too. Great teammate. I'm just pretty sure if you offer him a drink he'll tell you actually he's underage and he's saving himself or whatever.”

After that, everyone kind of loses interest in Aaron Nola, LSU freshman.

When Rhys cycles into Whitehouse Field for practice the next day, a little early after his second day at his job, the first thing he sees when he takes the turn among the dense forest of pitch pines and Tupelo trees, standing there alone in front of the grey-shingled concession stand, underneath the two blue awnings that spell out HARWICH MARINERS, is a tan, gangly boy with long, lanky limbs, swimming in a cream uniform that's twice too big for him.

He's holding his white hat in his hands, and he's got a big head of disorderly, curly brown hair, styled in a way that's probably more suited for an eleven year old boy than a college kid and reminds Rhys of his middle school headshots.  
Above his pretty, freckled cheeks, there's two big, beautiful green eyes.

Oh, no.

Rhys brakes in front of the awnings, and there's this weird moment when the guy just stares at him as if he's kind of scared to say hello.  
He's skinny, looking awkward and lost in his long-limbed body, not quite a child anymore but definitely not an adult either, with a pouting lower lip and a rounded jaw and red spots of acne on the side of his long, oval face.

Rhys knows it.  
He's done for.

He gets off the bike, and holds out his hand in resignation. So be it. Might as well find out who this is.

"Hey. I'm Rhys Hoskins."

The guy looks up at him, and shakes his hand, loose but strong, and maybe he isn't all that shy, maybe he just needed Rhys to take the first step.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Aaron."

The accent is unmistakeable and the pace is slow, drawling, relaxed like his sloped shoulders. He's Louisiana to the point it's almost comical, and Rhys doesn't have to guess the surname.

The goofy smile stretching on that pretty tan face belongs to Aaron Nola, Perfect Game 1st Team Freshman All-American, and Rhys's summer is probably about to derail before it even begins.  
He doesn't have too much time to think on it, though, because Coach E is walking towards the both of them, flanked with a couple players he picked up from their day jobs, and that's the end of that, because the first full-team workout is about to begin.


	3. Under The Lights

They win the first game of the season, against Bourne, two days later, 8-5.  
Whitehouse Field is as strange a place as Rhys has ever played in. It's nestled in a clearing, surrounded by tall pines and oaks, and on foot, you get there on dirt paths through the forest. With the bleachers draped in red, white and blue and the old scoreboard in the outfield, all blanketed away from everything, Rhys reckons it feels like the field beyond the corn in Fields of Dreams.  
There, after the game, the bright stadium floodlights cut the outlines of the leaves on the ground, and the departing fans chatter as the volunteers set up the post-game meal on table-clothed trestle tables.

Rhys takes a deep breath, smells lavender, grilled fish, salt, humus. He had a hit today. His bat connected with the ball, and the beautiful sound of leather against wood, sharp and sweet, seemed like it echoed throughout the forest, bouncing off into the open sky and Rhys got chills all the way up his spine, his gut jumping up in excitement. There's nothing like a wood bat. Rhys won't be convinced otherwise.

There's a slight nighttime chill in the summer warmth — "Enjoy it", Coach E had advised, "Once the heat and humidity get here, it's going to be a whole other thing out here" — and the team flocks around the buffet , handing their plates to be filled and grabbing bottles of Gatorade. Rhys stacks his glove on top of his head to take his food, and heads down to the long tables set up under the blue awnings, dropping down in a plastic chair opposite who happens to be Aaron Nola.

The guys had followed JaCoby's advice and started calling him Baby Nola, which he seemed to take... surprisingly placidly. That was the surprising thing about him. He seemed unbothered about most things at first glance. That didn't mean he was the talkative type, either. He was mostly quiet, a little awkward, a little introverted, such as Rhys had immediately noticed upon seeing him for the first time. But it was a smiling, laid-back kind of quiet.  
Right now, he sits straight at the table, hat sunk down low on his forehead old-school style, politely eating his meal with a paper napkin on his knees. The brown curls escaping from his cap shake with the occasional breeze that comes through the trees. At first, it's like he doesn't notice Rhys, and they eat silently for a minute, letting the rest of the table do the talking, discussing the feel of the bats and congratulating themselves for shutting down the Braves with such immediate success. Phil Ervin is the center of attention tonight. It's like he's been doing this his whole life, swinging ash.

But then, Aaron points down at his plate with his plastic fork.

"This is good and all," He comments, speaking a little low, as if confiding into Rhys. "But don't people up here season their food?"

Rhys almost chokes on his salad. He starts chuckling. Aaron looks up for a second, and there's no meanness or mischief in his hooded eyes; but they're not innocent either. It's all easygoing, kind playfulness on his long, soft face as he bares his big white teeth for a smile.

"I don't mean that mean, or anything," Aaron confirms. "I'm just used to spicy food, I guess."

Rhys shovels a mouthful of potatoes in his mouth before finding something to answer.

"You're Cajun, right?" He guesses, from the very compiscuous accent.

"I— well my dad's family's Italian, but my mom, she's Cajun, yeah."

He does see the Italian touches: the curls, the thick eyebrows. In his mellow manners and front-mouthed twang, though, he's all bayou.

"So you're like, home, at LSU."

Aaron smiles, but doesn't look at Rhys this time. He sticks to his plastic plate. Rhys feels... flattered, almost, that he’s making Aaron smile.

"Yeah, I'm born and raised in Baton Rouge too... so I live with my parents still."

"For real?" Rhys looks up, and can see Aaron's kind of blushing. Kind of embarrassed, almost.

"Yeah... I'm movin' out next year, though."

"So... Is this the first time you're on your own?"

Aaron pauses, sitting back a little, his face difficult to read now.

"... Yeah..."

And if he weren’t so calm, he’d sound a little scared just then. There’s a particular light casting soft shadows on his face, yellow and smooth and plain like paint, and to Rhys, he looks sweet and handsome, with his long neck and all his beauty marks.

“Actually, I haven't really left Louisiana before if you don’t count travelin' for games this year...” Aaron adds, tentatively.

"Oh, wow. This is different, isn't it?"

Rhys can relate, to be fair. He's travelled around little before, sure, but with his parents' busy jobs, they'd never really made it to the East Coast, either. Aaron looks around at the trees, and the light, and the chill wind that makes their napkins flap, and he nods.

"Yeah... it's like, another country."

"It's different from California, too." Rhys adds, to put him a little at ease. "I pretty much spent my whole life in Sacramento too."

"Oh, that right?" Aaron looks up, curious.

"Yeah, I gotta say, sometimes, I wish I'd gone to another school but being close to home... being able to see my family, you know, it's great."

He thinks about what his dad told him before they parted at the airport. 'Relax. Have fun. Just, please don't be these boys' father. You've had it hard enough the past few years. Alright, kiddo?'

Meanwhile, Aaron's nodding intently.

"I know. I always wanted to play for LSU too 'cause I grew up 15 minutes from the campus. And then my brother went. So it was pretty awesome to have a year with him." He smiles.

"Oh, yeah, Austin, right? He played here last year?" Rhys feigns ignorance — tries not to make it obvious that the whole team discussed Aaron before he got here.

The mention of his brother seems to light Aaron's face up.

"Yeah! And the year before." He says proudly. "He went in the fifth round a few days ago. To the Marlins." And then, he cocks his head a little, eyes still smiling, but sucking in his lips briefly. "It's gonna be weird not having him around all the time, though."

"Are you guys close?" Rhys asks carefully, just to keep him going. His voice is warm, level, kind of nasal, but pleasant. And he feels a little giddy looking at Aaron, the beginnings of what's definitely a crush continuing to build up inside him, to his half-hearted annoyance.

Surely it can't hurt to have a little hopeless summer crush. He's had some before.

"I mean..." Aaron lets out a short little laugh—_hehe_— and rolls his neck. "He's really good at annoyin' me. He does it on purpose and all. But that's because he's my big brother I guess. He's got to be kind of a butt to me." He pauses to eat. "I guess we're pretty different. But... I'm gonna miss him, yeah. It's kind of crummy we couldn't win the Super Regionals together, you know."

Rhys can't believe he just said "crummy", but okay.

"With it being the only year we got to play together." Aaron further explains. He seems contemplative. "I mean, I guess we won the game I pitched, like, two innings in."

"Yeah, no, I know. It sucks when you can't do anything about it."

"Yeah. But, you know. Sometimes it's all outta your hands."

"Yeah, that's what I try to tell myself—"

The whole table roars and hoots at a joke one of the bullpen kids made, and they both turn to see what the noise is all about, but nobody looks willing to explain.  
So they turn back to each other, and smile.  
There's something here.  
But Rhys knows better than to hope for more.


	4. By The Pond

Rhys starts the season on a 6-game hitting streak and it feels incredible.  
They're mowing the Eastern division down; it's a great feeling. They've started shattering bats and friendships are forming. The post day they made the trek all the way to Wareham, which, as far as Rhys was concerned in his limited experience of Cape Cod, was barely the Cape at all, but at least had a Wendy's.

The small metal bleachers around the fields were starting to fill up; the grassy banks hosted an increasing number of brightly colored lawn chairs and small children in little Vineyard Vines polo shirts. In Chatham, they had all gone to walk along the sandy bluffs of South Beach, looking out ahead at the open Atlantic, with Europe miles away beyond the Ocean. Aaron had been there, bare feet and hair flying in the sea wind, hanging back a little, wary of the cold water. He'd looked at Rhys, just for a moment, and smiled.  
There had been nothing more.

Rhys was unbelievably busy, anyway; too busy to have time to dwell on an increasingly hopeless crush. JaCoby had been right, Aaron was very invested in the Lord. He'd eschewed the team beach outing to go to attend Catholic Mass for the whole morning — he'd packed Sunday clothes. He wasn't the only one: other boys on the team were religious, of course. You had your usual pushy evangelicals and your pitchers who prayed before every pitch; Rhys knew baseball players were so inclined. But none of them had the particular brand of rosary-bead Catholic devotion Aaron had.  
Anyway, it didn't really matter. What mattered was Aaron was heavy-silver-crucifix, icon-in-wallet, ash-Wednesday, Bayou Italian Catholic, and he sure as hell wasn't anywhere near a good candidate for getting involved with another man in any way.

It's not that Rhys is a hardened atheist; it's still hard to parse the afterlife not existing what with what happened to his family. But he can't imagine reconciling his now five year old realization that he really wanted to kiss boys with any kind of organized faith.  
Anyway, then again, he's too busy in life to make time for the rituals of religion, much like he's too busy here on the Cape to even have enough spare time to relax and play a board game with the Bradford kids, who seem to adore him.  
Between his lawnmowing job, early batting practice, laundry, games, travel, and even eating and sleeping, his early afternoon personal time is precious, and today, he's using it to help Mrs Bradford with groceries.

She was delighted by his offer and raved about him the whole ride to Shaw's.  
Rhys had been puzzled when she mentioned it but it turned out that Shaw's was both a supermarket and a New England thing.  
It also turned out that was where Aaron was working.  
Now, he had mentioned he was stocking the shelves at the supermarket; he just hadn't told Rhys which and Rhys hadn't been pressed to know. But it does surprise Rhys when he seen Aaron kneeling down on the linoleum in a green polo shirt and black hat with the orange logo, stacking tins of tuna on a low shelf.  
Rhys's arms are full of eggs and packets of crisps, and Aaron smiles at him with his teeth like he's both amused and genuinely happy to see him.

"Hey! Rhys! Where y'at?" And, when Rhys's face betrays his confusion, "I mean, how's it going."

"Great! How about you?"

"Alright, alright." he nods, still smiling. "Sorry, I got all Louisiana on you, there."

"Nah." Rhys waves off, actually kind of charmed. "It was cute."

That slipped out, and Rhys is about to clarify, but Aaron doesn't seem to really mind it. He laughs a little instead, and Rhys could swear he's blushing a little bit.

"Aw." He says, and Rhys can't really tell what that means, so he tries to move on and wipe the slate clean.

"What are you planning for later? Some guys are saying they might go to the beach." He may be fighting hard to beat his stupid crush down, but he likes hanging out with Aaron. He's sure they can just be friends.

Aaron keeps smiling, shoving some more tins onto the shelf, spinning them so that the label faces the right way.

"Actually, I'm probably gonna go fishing... My host dad showed me this pond not far away and he lent me some equipment..."

"Oh—"

"You can come if you wanna. I mean I like fishing alone but it's fun with other people. We can bring snacks and all."

Aaron says it in such a laid back way, with such an easy-going smile. Rhys can only say yes.

So after the early game, which they win, although Rhys can't cough up a hit, they agree to meet up at the convened pond.  
The sun is slowly setting when Rhys hops off his bike and finds Aaron sitting in a clearing in the high grass, setting up their equipment.

Rhys's backpack is stocked with Doritos and salsa dip, he's got a couple of beers he got from Woodruff, and he's feeling... a little nervous. He hasn't really had any time alone with Aaron yet. They've been talking, sure, but in group settings. He's not sure they'll have anything to say one-on-one.

Aaron stands up when he sees Rhys, and extends out his arm for an affectionate handshake. Rhys goes for the shoulder tap. All is well.

"So do you fish a lot?" Rhys asks as Aaron adjusts their fishing rods.

He drops the Sac State-branded bag in the soft poverty grass.

"Yeah." Aaron replies, confidently. "We do it a lot down in Baton Rouge. I go canoeing too... It's real relaxing. I like how quiet it gets when you want it to be. And you? You fish?"

Rhys shrugs sheepishly.

"Not really. More of a hiking guy myself..."

Aaron's face lights up as they both sit down.

"Oh I love hiking. I love it! I've just bought new shoes and they're the best."

"I go to Lake Tahoe a lot and we hike all over there." Rhys explain, thinking of the lush green mountains and the turquoise water and maybe Meloria would agree to go over there when he comes back...

"I'm so jealous, man. I've always wanted to go."

So, maybe they do have things to talk about. Rhys pulls out their snacks and they wait on the fish to bite, talking quietly about National Parks they want to visit and mountains they want to climb and road trips they want to take. Aaron reels in a couple small fish and releases them, "too young", he says. He's looking for something big enough to bring back to his host family and maybe grill.

"I found seasoning salt at the shop. My ma she makes her own mix, but I guess I gotta work with what I got." he comments.

A bird cries, catching Aaron's attention.

"You hear that?" He quips.

Rhys nods. It almost sounds like a laugh, or an owl on speed, or something.

"That's a loon." Aaron says, almost proudly. "I saw a bunch the other day. We get some from the Great Lakes down in Louisiana.

"So that's what they're called."

"Yeah. Weird birds."

"Nice background noise, though."

"Yeah. It's soothing."

Rhys decides to whip out the cans just then. He taps Aaron, who's busy resetting the line, on the shoulder, and hands him one.  
Aaron kind of just looks at it, and then at Rhys.

"Oh," He goes, fairly neutrally. "How'd you get that?"

He seems friendly; curious. Rhys was honestly more prepared for a scenario where he just turns him down because he doesn't drink, like JaCoby had suggested.

"I pulled some strings." Rhys explains, raising an eyebrow confidentially.

"Is that allowed?" Aaron sounds a little more anxious now. It's the first time Rhys has seen him look anything other than shy, focused or completely laid-back. It's a little jarring, but... it's cute.

"I mean, no one's looking out here." He shrugs with a smile.

Aaron seems hesitant for a second, but then he takes the can.

"Thanks."

And he smiles at Rhys again something strange and playful and coy and oddly, disturbingly... sexy? The atmosphere is so different all of a sudden, his eyes drawn so strongly to Aaron's long tan throat, his Adam's apple, the way it bobs like the floaters of their fishing lines as Aaron opens the can and takes a few long sips, sure and anything but hesitant anymore, to Rhys's surprise.  
There in the high grass, by the waterlillies in the green pond, with the sun disappearing behind the pines, Rhys has to look away, feeling weird and voyeuristic.  
He opens his beer too, and drinks to distract himself.

"So you're not the stuck up Christian guy everyone seems to think you are." He smiles, finally, as Aaron puts the can down in the grass.

That makes Aaron chuckle —_hehe_, again— and cock his head sideways, eyes lidded and shrugging, as if to say, "oh well".

"Is that what they're saying? It's cause I ain't a party guy or anything back at LSU, I guess. Austin he's a little more outgoing. But I ain't stuck up. I'm just chilled-out. Never too high, never too low, that's what I say."

Rhys nods, taking another sip but not taking his eyes off Aaron, who's looking out at the fishing lines pensively now. He doesn't expand on the God part. Maybe he knows it's self-evident.

"I like a drink. I just don't wanna black out or nothing, ya know." He continues, a little quieter. "I don't wanna be doing things I gonna regret after."

"Yeah." Rhys says simply, not sure what else to reply. "I mean, I might for my 21st. Might not have a choice with all my friends around."

"When's your birthday?"

"March 17th. I'll definitely still be at school. So... I mean..." He can't imagine anyone being happy with him getting black-out drunk during the baseball season.

"You don't wanna be real hungover on a game day." Aaron nods, finishing Rhys's sentence.

"Exactly." But it's probably going to happen anyway. Whatever.

Aaron grabs a few Doritos, and shoves them in his mouth.

"My birthday was draft day this year." he states.

"June 4th?"

The sea wind, softened by the pines, is here again, ruffling their hair, Aaron's fuzzy curls flying in the pink dusk. His green eyes are looking darker as the light dims.

"Yeah..." He seems reflective.

"Must have been weird. With your brother getting drafted, and all." Rhys has learned that talking about Austin was a good way to get Aaron's mouth running, and he wants this conversation to last.

"Yeah." Aaron repeats, taking another sip from his can. "It was strange, ya know. I mean..."

He pulls his knees up against his chest, and rests his elbows there, his hand hanging against his shins with the Narragansett can.

"When I was a kid I didn't even really like playing. Cause my dad was always about shoutin' at me and all. And Austin he wouldn't really let me play with him and his friends cause I wasn't good enough... and I wasn't all that great at making friends of my own."

Rhys lets him pause to drink again. Sounds like he was always kind of a loner, awkward kid.

"I don't know where I'm goin' with this, honestly." He finally says. "I was real caught up in Austin, I kinda forgot it was my birthday. I think everyone kinda did."

That sounds infinitely sad to Rhys. Aaron doesn't really sound too hurt by it, but he's definitely not happy about it, either. It sounds like he really doesn't know how he feels, to be fair, but he definitely knows he feels some sort of way about it.

"You got gifts at least?" Rhys enquires.

Aaron's mouth corner rises.

"Yeah. My dad took me new glove shopping like every year the day before."

"Oh that's cool. My dad never really had the time for it, I wish he did, but he already showed up to as many of my games as he could... My mom and him were always really good about, you know, making time for that, even though they had really busy schedules."

"Are they coming to see you here?" Aaron asks.

Rhys leans over to scoop some salsa with a chip.

"Well... My dad's really busy with a case right now."

"And your ma?"

Rhys feels his stomach twist a little bit. That's always awkward.

"Well," he utters, carefully. "My mom passed three years ago. It's fine though—" he quickly says as he watches Aaron's face drop. "Don't worry about it. You didn't know."

Aaron still looks discomfited.

"I'm sorry, man. That must be really hard."

It's strange how Aaron's laid back, monotone voice, all soft teething and barely-moving lips, can sound sincere at all when it barely oscillates. But Rhys feels it. Aaron empathizes.

"It's fine, I mean I'm fine, I mean, I'm alright. It's hard, I just... she was ill for a long time. As long as I can remember. She was a warrior. I guess it’s... bringing my dad and my sister and me closer together.”

That's the tall boy in his hand talking. He shuts himself up. Aaron looks at him with big round eyes, like he doesn't quite know what to say.  
Then, the line starts pulling.

"Oh, dang!" Aaron mutters, crawling to the cane and grabbing it.

"Is it big?"

"Feels like it."

Aaron pulls and reels, Rhys on his heels.  
With a splash he tugs a trout out of the water, silver and flailing, and in his long skinny hands it does look larger than their previous catches.

"That's the boy." Aaron grins, showing the fish to Rhys. "That's getting grilled."

The falling evening smells like raw silt and warm pine needles. The last golden light illuminates Aaron's smile as he faces westward. His eyes shine like two green gems caught in a sunray.  
Rhys's heart soaks in the sight. The loon hoots again.

God, he's falling in love.


	5. Merkel Beach

A popular hangout for the team during free time after work and before games is the beach at Harwich Port. As the days warm, Rhys has noticed more and more guys will gather there, with lunch and sunblock, lying on the sand and ostensibly watching the bikini-clad tourists tanning and splashing in the waves.  
Ogling at rich girls isn't really Rhys's scene, so he doesn't usually partake; but today, with the air horrifically moist and the heat in the 90's, he decided he needed a swim, at the very least. He'd sweated in the sun over a lawnmower for two hours, and he deserved a break and some cold, briny water over his head.

Merkel Beach is the team's choice today. They usually hit up Red River, but Trey Mancini's host family had recommended this slightly more secluded ones — where there would be less kids, and more wealthy girls wandering from the neighboring beach clubs, or so Trey said.

Nantucket Sound is calm and flat, quiet surf not-quite-crashing onto the shore, seaweed strewn about on the warm white sand. It's radically different from the Pacific, its tall waves and rocky waters; it reminds Rhys of the Bay, but the Bay's all concrete buildings and harbors and piers, and this is all heathgrass and scrub oak and low, shingled houses teetering on the edge of the sandbanks.  
Rhys looks back to where he chained up his bike, making sure it's secured, and heads towards the small group of guys gathered in several scattered circles few yards away. Trey was right, there are less families and more packs of girls in expensive, lacy swimsuits.

To his great surprise, Aaron's there, along with his roomie, Ian Happ, a Cincinnati guy. They're sitting a foot or two from the three other LSU guys, kind of lazily conversing. When Rhys approaches, sweat stains on his grey Jesuit High t-shirt, Aaron looks up from the sand which he'd been staring at.  
That's when Rhys notices he's in his swimming shorts, shirt off.

He's skinny of course, but soft-skinned, covered in freckles and beauty spots. Without the baggy uniform on his back and stripped of his favorite saggy grey striped hoodie, he looks so much broader than Rhys had assumed he was. His back is muscular, his shoulders wide. His skin is gently yellow all over despite his ballplayer tan, which makes his forearms and neck brown almost.  
There's a boniness to him still despite his lean muscles, and some baby fat here and there, so that his body seems torn between childhood and adulthood, like many of the other boys here, gangly and transitional and comforting, just like he'd noticed the first day he'd seen him. Rhys’s knees soften to a mush seeing Aaron’s dark pink nipples and the brown freckles on his shoulders.

“Hey, Rhys.” Aaron gives a toothy smile, eyes straining against the sun.

“Hey Hosk.” Ian mumbles, sounding totally thrilled, his eyes focused on a blonde girl in a blue two-piece suit carefully approaching the water.

The others acknowledge him in a collective mutter, a few guys giving him high-fives, and Rhys figures he'd better remove his shirt if he's planning on going swimming. He pulls it over his head and drops it on top of his bag, next to Aaron.

"Anyone going in?" He enquires.

Some guys shrug.

"Later, maybe."

"Don't let us hold you back, Hosk."

"I'll come." Aaron utters.

Rhys glances down. Aaron's getting up, brushing sand off his long legs. Rhys's heart jumps.

"Hell yeah." he says, holding out his hand to help Aaron up.

Aaron grabs his wrist. That's definitely the longest skin contact they've had so far. Rhys laces his fingers around Aaron's own forearms, and pulls him up.  
Aaron chucks his phone down into the worn-out blue backpack he carries everywhere, Rhys kicks off his shoes, and they both set off.

At first they're walking, but, though Rhys isn't sure who starts running first, that doesn't last long. They're racing to the water, kicking up wet sand, the sole of their bare feet stinging with the seashells littering the shore.

The sea is _cold_. They splash loudly through the flow, Rhys letting out a scream, Aaron's strides spattering him with water. They run until they're almost hip-deep, unable to push through anymore, the icy ocean biting at their legs.  
Rhys hisses, dipping down to his waist, big shudders running through him. Aaron is frowning, teeth gritted, holding himself, water still only thigh-high on his long, long legs.

"Get in!" Rhys chirps at him.

"You get in!" Aaron retaliates, with his trademark goofy smile.

"You're keeping your balls warm. I'm in compared to you!" Rhys motions to the water level that's sitting just underneath his pecs.

Aaron looks away, grinning.

"Okay, on the count of three then." He offers. "Up to the neck."

Rhys nods. Seems like a good deal. He braces himself.

"One..."

"Two..."

"Three!"

They both sink down swiftly, and Aaron rattles out —because calling the sound he makes a yell would be a long stretch, considering his inability to be anything resembling loud— squeezing his eyes shut.

“Dang!” He exclaims.

“It’s not so bad once you’re in, to be fair.” Rhys lies. It’s freezing. “I mean it’s better than the humidity... That kind of heat, man, it wears me down.

Aaron’s toothy grin is back.

“I’m fine with it. ‘S nothing compared to down where I come from.”

“So you mean there’s worse?” Rhys tentatively wets the back of his neck: maybe he’ll go underwater.

“I don’t know. It’s what I’m used to! I like pitching in that weather.” Aaron points up, his index finger poking out of the water.

“You’re... out of your mind, man.” Rhys can't believe anyone would actually prefer these conditions to some nice, dry, springtime heat.

Aaron chuckles, pulling himself in the water up to his nose, his mouth hidden, two playful eyes fixed on Rhys. Rhys absolutely doesn't know how to react to that.  
So he splashes Aaron.

There's a yelp, and Aaron's flapping about, immediately retaliating. Rhys screams out, getting an eyeful of sea water. He pushes at the surface, sending big waves to Aaron, and for a few hectic seconds, he keeps his eyes squeezed shut, frenetically waving his arms about.

When he opens one eye again, Aaron's chuckling, panting a little, hands ready to get back to splashing. Rhys won't have it. He takes his momentum, and leaps at Aaron, his big body crashing in the water. He grabs at Aaron in the messy process, pushing him fully into the water, and they both go under.

They trash around and resurface, gasping for air, laughing hysterically.  
Rhys feels refreshed; his heart's beating fast; Aaron is close. In that little moment of unawareness, of adrenaline, he lets himself enjoy it like it could ever be anything more.

He opens his eyes.  
Aaron’s face is bright pink, he’s rubbing the water out of his eyes.

“Asshole.” He says, grinning. He’s not mad at Rhys one bit.

“I thought you liked being damp.”

Aaron raises his hand to splash him again and shut him up, but Rhys is ahead of him and grabs him by the wrists.

“Nuh-uh.”

They’re kind of skinny, delicate. Aaron struggles against his grip, chuckling, but Rhys is stronger, so he just twists and pulls unsuccessfully.

“Let me gooo!” He protests.

“You’re just gonna splash me.”

“And you’d deserve it too! You started it.”

Rhys can’t hold in his smile. This is the most he’s touched Aaron, ever, and it’s really hard to let his hands drop Aaron’s arms. Because things would seem suspect otherwise. But in his head, he pulls Aaron in, and he leans down, and still holding this wrists, he kisses those pink lips.  
It’s all just wishful thinking.

They emerge from the water and the hot sun starts baking the moisture off their skin almost immediately as they walk back to the other guys.  
They’re facing Hyannis’s Sean Manaea tonight, and everyone’s talking about how much of a stud he is. Apparently, he’s Samoan. Rhys listens absent-mindedly as he rubs his towel on his shoulders and hair.

“Hey, I'm gonna get ice cream. Wanna take a walk?” Aaron’s voice rises from the brouhaha, tentative.

He’s still standing up, his towel around his neck, hands on his hips but not looking so sure of himself.  
Rhys’s heartbeat quickens slightly.

“Oh! Yeah, why not.” He's trying to seem as nonchalant as possible. He's not going to turn down more time with Aaron, but he needs to calm down if he wants to be buddies with him — nothing more.

Aaron smiles and gives a little nod, as if to confirm it to himself. Rhys can't believe how shy he seems to get, sometimes, even when Coach E's complimenting him.  
There’s a café that sells ice cream a block up the street that leads down to the beach, so Rhys puts on his shoes and pulls his t-shirt over his head, following Aaron, who’s already put a loose camo pattern tank top back on.

They walk silently into the brush back to the street and past Rhys’s bike, til they’re out of earshot of the beach, and something happens.  
This end of the town is quiet, like it's wrapped in cotton, the marshland on one side and the luxury clubs on the other. It's strange and liminal, the sound of the waves still on the ambient drone but the buzz of Main Street starting to emerge, the two mixing into a paradoxical silence.

Aaron and Rhys walk side by side, unnecessarily squeezed on the sidewalk, though the road is wide and empty and cars don't often come down this way. Rhys could step down the curb, sure, but Aaron's on the side of the road and he's not moving. So they carry on like that, and their arms brush against each other, and their elbows bump together, and their shoulders touch occasionally, small, warm contact that makes Rhys's skin buzz like the cicadas.  
The hair on his forearms and the back of his neck is standing up. He can hear Aaron breathing out through his nose, and their feet dragging in unison against the loose gravel, their shoes kicking up loose sand, he can smell dried grass and the salt on Aaron's tan body.

He takes it in, one big long breath, feels something swirling inside his chest, lets that feeling from back in the water wash over him again.  
He doesn't know if Aaron can feel this invisible thing building up at the base of his ribcage. If it's obvious... if it's mutual.

“It’s so much colder than back home, that water.” Aaron finally comments, breaking the tense interlude.

“Honestly. I thought the Pacific was supposed to be colder.” Rhys blurts out, almost subconsciously, still stunned by the closeness.

Aaron chuckles quietly, and goes back to his silence. Rhys scrapes his head for conversation subjects, not wanting to let himself get swallowed back into the distracting warmth of casual touch.

“Do you go to the beach a lot? Back home?”

Aaron kind of shrugs.

“Um... not really. Baton Rouge is a little way from the sea, I guess. People usually go with friends but...” he pauses. “I didn’t have a whole lot of friends in high school.”

Rhys ponders the reply for a little. It keeps coming up. Aaron always looks sheepish and weird when he says it, like he’s sad but doesn’t feel like elaborating, and it makes Rhys curious. He doesn’t look too close to the LSU guys here, either, and he’s wondering how much of that is Aaron wanting to be alone and how much is that the guys are the problem.

“You got friends at LSU, though, right?”

Aaron nods immediately, his wet curls bobbing along.

“Oh yeah. I mean, I got my brother... and I think I’ll room with Brady Domangue next year. We got lots in common, ya know, fishin’ and all.”

Rhys has no idea who Domangue is but the look on Aaron’s face makes him feel weird and unpleasantly anxious.

Is he... jealous?

“What are you getting?” Aaron interrupts, pointing at the ice cream flavor list on the front of the shop, which they’ve reached.

“Oh.” Rhys’s eyes scan the sign. “Do they have Cookies n Creme?”

They do. He glances back at Aaron, who’s ordering a chocolate vanilla swirl soft serve. He looks like a little kid, smiling as he gets handed the cone, gums out and all.

They walk back slowly, the ice cream melting fast in the heat.  
Rhys’s first order is not to look at Aaron’s tongue flicking at the cone. It’s a bad idea. He knows, from experience, that it’s a surefire way to get himself going a little too much. So he tries to stare right ahead, at the pines hiding the entrance to the beach, at the sawgrass at the side of the hot paved road.

“This is pretty good.” Aaron states. “Man, ‘s all over my hands, though.

Rhys can’t help but look over. Aaron’s fingers are dripping with melted ice cream and he’s catching the drops on his lips, licking at his hands, holding the cone precariously between his long thumb and forefinger.

Rhys can feel his cheeks heating up. He tries to concentrate on his own two-scoops, looks down at it, and takes a big, incongruous, teeth-first bite out of it. The cold shoots up his skull and he stalls, making a shocked sound. This was ill advised, and messy: he’s got ice cream on his nose now. But it’s efficient, because he isn’t thinking about Aaron’s pink tongue now.

“Why— what the heck were you thinking?” Aaron snorts.

Oh great. He noticed. He’s looking at Rhys with amusement and incredulity— and the worst part is that it looks good on him.

“Wait— you got some everywhere. Hold up now.”

He paces ahead and slows to a stop, so that Rhys can’t help but meet him face on, so that they stand there, Aaron and the extant horizon of the pine-shuttered beach ahead of Rhys.

The humming silence is blanketing them again, the hot sun making Aaron squint and drying the frizzy baby hairs across his wet head.  
He looks like something else right there, all skinny and pliant, looks like a part of the scenery, a tree nymph, a water spirit, something whimsical and light and unknowable in the most wanting wild way.

"Here." Aaron fishes out a bunch of slightly damp paper napkins he picked up at the shop from the pocket of his shorts.

He brings his hand up to Rhys's face, and Rhys holds his breath.  
He feels the pressure of his fingers on his nose, on his chin, wiping him off, kind of too hard.  
He can hear a shakiness in Aaron's exhale.  
One of Aaron's fingers lingers a little too long against his jaw.

And Rhys knows it then, when he looks at Aaron's face and there's this wide-eyed, half-alarmed expression on his face, but his hand remains where it is, almost like Aaron's body has a mind of its own and he's watching on. Rhys knows when he watches Aaron pull back, almost jerky, almost reluctant. He knows when he sees those green eyes sweep down to Aaron's feet, and when he sees him brush an escaped strand of frizzy hair behind his ear.

Like he caught himself red-handed.

"Uh." Aaron says quietly.

He kind of shuffles, stuffing the napkins back into his pocket.

"...Thanks." Rhys lets out, his voice betraying his... well, whatever's going on in his chest right now.

And they keep walking, but Aaron's fidgeting with the hem of his tank top, and he's thinking so loud Rhys can almost hear him. But it's fine, because Rhys's heart is definitely beating louder than that, because he knows now. He knows he can ask this:

"Um." he lets out. "Do you... wanna go have a walk... We don't have to go back to the guys just yet... the beach's like... it goes on." He fumbles.

And get an answer like this, with Aaron nodding a little too enthusiastically:

"Yeah! Yeah. That would be... real nice. Yeah, let's do that."

So they do, they walk across the small dune, in silence in the sun, leaving Merkel Beach behind them, zig-zagging between the sparse pines shading them from the view of the beach houses looking towards the ocean, til they're far enough away from everyone, on a grassy patch of sand where nobody's looking, and they sit down to finish what's left of their ice cream, knees pulled up, the sound of the surf and wind and nothing else.

Rhys doesn't know what to do. He's spent the past few weeks convincing himself Aaron was out of reach, and now they're sitting here and Rhys is still unsure if they're tuned on the same frequency, and if they're talking in code or if he's confusing smoke for fire.  
He feels like Alan Turing and his machine, trying to parse the mixed signals of the greatest enigma of all: awkward Christian boys with a swing in their hips and Catholic guilt in excess.

"Do you like it here?" Aaron asks, abruptly.

He's staring out at the horizon, at the blue sea and the blue sky. Verdigris eyes fastened southerly.  
It's such a random question it obviously means something else, but Rhys hasn't quite got the key to decipher it.

"I... I mean, yeah. I guess we've only been here, like, two weeks, but... I mean, it's nice."

"I like it." Aaron says, decisively. "I think I like being far away a little."

"From home?"

"From everything."

He's looking at Rhys now, and they're looking at each other.

"No one can see me here, you know? I can do whatever I wanna."

His gaze turns intense, his pupils thin with the beating sunlight. He seems closer than before, blown up and zoomed in like in the frame of a movie camera.

Rhys's heart is pounding in his ears like a drum.

"What do you wanna do?" Rhys hears himself ask, like the words escaped from his mouth.

Aaron stares at him like he's trying to move something with his mind. Rhys realizes he's leaning over on his hands, his fingers digging into the sand, shoulders bowed like a tiger on the prowl; but Aaron looks like it's himself he's hunting.

Rhys sits there, chest facing the sea, eyes locked with him.  
The seconds elapse audibly, like an ancient water-clock, with the sound of their breathing meeting the ebb and flow of the sea.  
He doesn't move. He stays just still. The moment hangs there on Aaron's parted lips.

Time stretches like taffy to an unbearable length, and then snaps like a rubber band.  
Aaron pounces, knocking Rhys over like a big dog, shooting the breath out of him, and they're rolling around in the sand, swearing and yelping, grabbing and kicking, Aaron's laugh ha-ha-ha now, belting out as he tries to tickle Rhys and they rough and tumble and the sand gets in their shorts and hair.  
Rhys doesn't know what's happening. He's just relishing in it, like he was in the water, like he was back on the street. And he's trying so hard, so hard to stay within his lines, and lord this day has been testing him, lord he just wants to give in, maybe he's not strong enough, lying here laughing with Aaron above him, straddling him, holding him down, the silver crucifix he wears around his neck hanging between them.

He could break free if he wanted: Aaron's 170 pound body isn't exactly an obstacle. But Rhys's head is pleading, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me, so he might as well be made of lead.

"Is that what you want to do?" Rhys asks, still catching his breath, his heart battering. "Shove a load of sand in my fucking mouth?"

Aaron laughs, nervously.

"No."

"Then, what?"

Aaron's face is so close he's out of focus now, and Rhys feels the soft weight of the pendant landing against the tender flesh of his neck, the metal warm and a little sweaty, and he almost flinches.

Instead, he closes his eyes.  
Aaron exhales.

Quickly, Rhys feels a peck against his forehead, so fast he could have missed it, soft lips colliding with his skin and leaving right after, ghostlike and faint.  
Aaron scrambles off of him, stumbles to his feet, and runs away.

Rhys sits up, stunned, and it's all he can do to watch him leave, back to safety, long legs kicking up sand, looking back at Rhys and grinning.

God damn.  
What is he supposed to get from this?


	6. Fog In Chatham

The fog comes three innings in, with two on, and two out.  
Aaron's on the mound, dealing, his baggy uniform draped like a maritime signal flag on his beanpole body. Grey, red, navy. His windup like a semaphore sign. Rhys, focused on the batter, doesn’t see it coming at first as it creeps in from over Oyster Pond and spills into center field.

They were all briefed on the possibility: Chatham, in the elbow of the Cape, faces the weather that Harwich doesn't get head-on. Wistfully, Coach E had told them of the Anglers’ Andrew Miller’s famous fog game, a pitching gem lost to a fit of Chatham’s infamous pea soup.

Now, Rhys isn’t a fog novice. He likes to think he’s pretty experienced in the fog department, as a Giants fan and a Central Valley native. San Francisco’s not so far and he’s been plenty of times, especially since he got his license, and he’s used to seeing the sheets of low clouds blanketing the city when summer comes around.

But when the Cape Cod fog rolls into Veterans Field that evening, nothing’s the way he expects it to be.

Everything here on the Cape feels like the end of the world, like the last stop at the very end of a narrow jetty planted with wildflowers. Aaron was right, it feels far away, not just from their respective homes, but from everything.  
In some aspects, it’s almost like it operates on a slightly different plane of reality. Like something’s not quite right, but not quite wrong either, like one summer grew too large and swallowed the whole peninsula; the way baseball is here, seemingly trapped in time, naive and childlike almost, like a marriage of Rhys’s summer camp Julies and the worn baseball movie VHS’s he used to watch and rewatch as a kid, is like nowhere else he’s ever been. The way the light is, the way the dusk falls onto the field, casting cut-out shadows, feels like a memory, something that went through the twists and turns of someone’s brain already and came out dreamlike, perfect, magical. Untethered from the universe.

The fog rolls in, quiet, low, thickly wrapping around their legs. The field falls silent. The players stall. Everyone watches. Rhys holds his breath.  
Under the stars slowly lighting up one by one as the sunlight finishes lingering westward over the lavender fields of Harwich, the floodlights of Veterans Field pierce through the mist. The cool air is crystalline; the colors flat, the shapes abstracted. Rhys looks up and in the glistening smoke Aaron is there on the mound, wading up to his waist in solid fog like a boat in the tide.

It feels like another world. It feels like nowhere at all.

And Rhys looks at Aaron, and Aaron looks at Rhys, two sets of eyes locked together. And Aaron is beautiful all swaddled in the milky mist engulfing more and more of his body as the cloud moves in, his curls framed in wisps of white and grey, and they're the only two people around for miles, just the two of them at the edge of the continent, where nor'easters come to crash and islands are born and die, just the two of them perched on a tiny fish hook cast in the waters of the Atlantic.

Alone, unseen, out of existence.  
Standing there, forgotten in the fog.  
Standing there in God’s blind spot.

They all emerge different people somehow, like weeks have passed rather than minutes. Some are laughing, some just annoyed. The game is postponed, the mist won’t clear out. The minivan drops them all back at Whitehouse Field and slowly everybody scatters home, but Rhys waits, standing by the shingled announcing booth where his bike is chained up, waiting for something that the fog whispered to him would happen.

Once everyone else is gone, the poplars and pines around the concession stance take a ghostly hue, all moonlit and shivering from the inland breeze sweeping through the arm of the Cape.  
Aaron trots out from the darkness, looking a little winded.  
Still in his uniform, he closes the gap between him and Rhys.

"Uh" He says, when all that separates them anymore is a few inches. "Happ's waitin' out there, but I just... I just wanted, to, uh..."

Aaron glances around, but Rhys can't wait one more second.  
He leans forwards on his toes and lets his mouth collide with Aaron's.

He doesn't care about what might happen. The fog washed everything away.  
All that's left is Aaron's lips, moving softly against his, kissing back. His hands resting on Rhys’s arms. The curls of his bangs tickling Rhys’s forehead.

It’s done so soon.  
Aaron pulls away, and Rhys can’t tell where these green eyes end and begin, so absorbed in them he’s almost lost.  
Aaron dips back in, pecking his lips like he doesn’t want to forget the taste.

Then he backs away, slowly at first, smiles at Rhys like the shyest child, and then turns around.

"Gotta go." He says quietly, motioning back to the path.

And with that, he runs off.

On the ride back to the Bradfords' house Rhys feels the wind in his hair and flowing in his shirt and he could swear he's inside a dream, that he'll wake up and all of this will be gone, erased like a slate, swept away like the mist.

But as he lets the bike cruise down the gentle slope of the road, the air warm and wet around him, the lamp of the lighthouse flashing in the distance, he knows this is real.


	7. Outdoor Shower

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, here comes the explicit content.

He spends the entirety of the next day incredibly nervous. Yarmouth-Dennis is in town, he has to trim hedges on in Harwich proper, and he told Ms Bradford he'd drop off his host brother snacks at his Little League practice, so he's got things to fill up his day, but he barely got any sleep last night, thinking about Aaron's lips and his smile, thinking about texting him but then holding back, paralyzed.

Aaron's at the field before he is, focusing on his off-day exercises. Rhys can't even look at him— when he does, his chest feels like it might explode, or like everybody might be able to tell what they did last night, like it's obvious, like they all know. Last night feels so far away: he can't imagine why he behaved the way he did, why he had the boldness to kiss Aaron, why he didn't have any misgivings, why it felt so evident that they could and should kiss, so unquestionable.  
Now the fog's gone, the day's hot and clear, and Rhys is paranoid and spiraling.

What is he doing, getting involved with a teammate — even though he'll only be a teammate for a month? Why is he possibly risking everything — because that's what he's doing, kissing another guy in the hottest summer getaway for industry scouts — for a summer fling in New England?

He shifts from one foot to the other in the outfield, trying not to glance to the dugout, where Aaron's sitting with his long body folded on the bench, looking reflective as always. He pulls up his mandatory stirrups, and tries to focus, on Woodruff on the hill, on his possible routes, on the game in general, everything but the anxiety creeping up in his chest.

He wishes he could talk to someone about this, but nobody knows. Not even Meloria. Not even his dad. Not that he thinks either of them would have anything else than an overwhelmingly positive reaction, for god’s sake, he’s from Sacramento, it's just so hard to even think about saying, and it's so complicated, and he doesn't want anyone worrying for him. Especially not his family. They've got more important things to deal with and he can handle himself.

Standing there in the beaming sun, it's times like these where he misses his mom the most. And when he regrets never telling her about one of the most important things about him.

Maybe he's homesick. Three weeks on the other side of the country will start doing that for you, he guesses. When he woke up this morning in a twin sized bed with a poster of the 2007 Red Sox above him, he'd been so struck by how much he missed everybody, how much he missed Sacramento, how normal and easy-going everything felt there, how real everything felt there. He could only take so much heart and so much stomach. The Cape was a fairytale and he'd woken up scared and exhausted of it, like a dumbfounded protagonist dropped in a fantasy world, terrified of the unknown that dwarfs him.

God, the last time he'd kissed a guy he was at a frat house in September and got too drunk and too stupid and too careless and just wanted to have fun. And now he'd made that mistake again, completely sober, completely lucid.  
And he looks out to the infield and imagines his life if he ever makes it in baseball.  
He loves the game more than anything, but sometimes, he just contemplates the idea of just quitting everything, getting a normal job, and living in Lavender Heights with a boyfriend without ever worrying about being found out, and it looks more attractive than his major league dreams.

But, then again, Reggie had told him, before he left: the Cape is a pioneer's sieve where gold shakes away from dirt, the final filter where, after years of selection, of travel teams and D1 program offers, a player finally finds out where he measures up next to the very best of his peers. Where he finally finds out if his dream is attainable, or if he should start paying more attention in class back in college.  
Maybe the Cape just has more ways than one of exerting its power of selection. Maybe you don't have to find out you're not cut out for the major league life from a bad game or a scout snub. Maybe Aaron's kiss, and his flirtations, and this weird anxiety attack is just the Cape's mystical way of telling Rhys his baseball fortune.

They lose the game; Rhys collects a double, but he’s left stranded.  
As always, the crowd lingers around Whitehouse Field as the volunteers set up the tables for the post-game meal. Locals chat by the foul lines, tourists finish their hot dogs at the picnic tables.  
Rhys doesn't feel like talking to anyone. He takes his mac n cheese and his salad and his orange Gatorade and he sneaks off to go eat alone, away from the table where all the other guys have gathered to complain about the ump and try to air out negative feelings on the close loss.

"Hey."

Rhys turns around. Aaron's standing with his paper plate and napkins and drink, following him.

"Can I eat with you?" He asks, quietly, his shoulders drawn inwards.

Rhys can't say no— he doesn't know if he wants to say no, anyway. Really, he's got no reason to besides the fear inside his belly. They both head to the deserted metal bleachers and sit together, looking out at the field. Rhys wonders how Aaron feels. If he's scared too, or if he's completely oblivious to the consequences, if he's still so drunk on freedom and seaside air he doesn't see the danger at all. If that silver cross around his neck burns a little when he thinks of the kiss.

They eat, silently. A group of children run onto the field, chasing each other, tossing a foul ball around. Rhys watches them, screaming and running and playing catch around the bases, and sees himself in them. And it strikes him, it really does, that this— the Cape, the league, the games— is the last time baseball will feel like this ever again. After this, it's the end, or the pros, and if baseball becomes your job, then, can you really enjoy it the way you used to, as a kid, as an amateur, with nothing on the line but your dreams and personal pride and unbound love of the game?

"When I was a kid," Aaron says seamlessly, as if he could read Rhys's thoughts. "I'd go to the park and practice pitching, but with no ball at all or anything. I'd do it everywhere, really. In the street... in the supermarket, and stuff. Neighbors they thought I wasn't right in the head. And, I mean..."

He doesn't finish the sentence. Rhys glances at him, looks at his hooded eyes fixed on the kids playing.

"Did you know it looked weird?"

"I don't think I cared. I was a little bit of a weird kid." Aaron shrugs, reflective.

Rhys can't really relate. He likes to think he was a pretty normal, even boring kid. Playing lots of sports, and video games, and reading his dad's Stephen King novels in secret.  
He imagines Aaron as a kid, big ears, curly hair, huge eyes, hurling invisible balls in his front yard.

"I was just out there imagining I was pitching Game 7." Aaron smiles; still not looking at Rhys, still watching the kids play.

"I don't think that's too much of a stretch, honestly." Rhys says, carefully.

"Aw. Shucks." Aaron blushes, shaking his head. His cheeks are pink, he looks adorable, Rhys wants to kiss him again; but it's complicated, and it hurts to think about.

They hear the other guys burst into laughter back next to the concessions stand. But Rhys likes it here, in the warm evening, the sound of the leaves and pine needles shivering; can't help but enjoy Aaron's company despite everything, can't keep it from soothing his heart. He pivots a little, turning his knees to Aaron. It's strange how talking to him makes his anxiety vanish.  
He thinks it might be kinship.

"No, I can really see it. Hey, what's your team?"

Aaron kind of shifts, looking down grinning.

"Uh... well, I grew up like, minutes from Alex Box, so we were Tigers fans."

"Come on. Cut the bullshit." Rhys smirks. Surely he has a favorite MLB team. What kid doesn't?

Aaron giggles quietly, hiding behind his Gatorade bottle.

"Uhh... Well, I'm a big Nolan Ryan fan... and we went to a few games... so I guess I liked the Astros."

"Knew it. I knew it." Rhys laughs.

"Aw, be quiet. I know they suck. I don't want to hear it from a program' Giants fan." Aaron moans.

They both laugh together. It feels good, and right, and Rhys's right knee is touching Aaron's left knee.

"Sorry, I'll make sure to tell them to be less awesome. I'll tell Posey to tone it down."

Aaron shoves his arm playfully, almost knocking over Rhys's plate.

"Shush!"

"Well, I hope you get drafted by them and get them a ring." And he says that almost sincerely.

"I don't know..." Aaron mutters, bashfully, like he's considering it.

"Aw, come on, you can't tell me you don't want to wear your team's jersey." He sure wants to. Just imagining himself in orange and black makes his heart flutter like he's nine years old again. "I still have my Bonds jersey from 2002."

Aaron sits back up, finishing his plate.

"Um, I mean, I didn't have a jersey or anything, I had baseball cards though, but, I lost them when our house burned down." He says, kind of casually.

Rhys almost chokes on his mac n cheese.

"Your house burned down?"

"Yeah. On my 12th birthday." Aaron explains, sheepishly, clearly regretting calling attention to the event.

That's probably why Aaron didn't tell Rhys about this back when they were talking about their birthdays, by the pond last week.

"Oh, shit. That's... that really sucks."

"Yeah it sucked at the time. It was scary and I lost all my stuff so I was pretty upset, as a kid.”

Aaron sounds embarrassed. Rhys wonders if his parents got him therapy for it, or anything. He remembers his sessions with the grief counsellor and then the family therapist after his mom died. It hurt, sure, but he feels like now he's a pretty well-adjusted person. Conversely, he feels like maybe Aaron's invisible ball throwing and awkward behavior might have a little bit to do with watching his house go up in flames on his birthday as a kid.

"It doesn't really matter, though." He waves it off with a smile out the corner of his mouth. "There's worse things."

They look up, and Rhys realizes the field is empty now. The kids have run back to their departing parents and back behind home plate everyone's cleaning up the meal. It's just Aaron and Rhys, sitting on the bleachers, staring up at the moon with their empty plates and plastic bottles by their side. It's going to be time to go soon. Aaron always rides back with Happ. But they enjoy the peacefulness for a few more seconds, and Rhys's anxiety from earlier is so far away as he soaks in the summer around them.

"Ya know," Aaron says, quietly, breaking the silence. "I liked kissing you."

Everything stops; the moment crystallizes. Rhys's heart twists wildly in his ribcage. He's out of control again, and he knows he should listen to himself from two hours ago, knows he might regret this, but he listens to the yells of the other boys behind them and realizes something.

Maybe he grew up too fast. His dad always tells him he doesn't behave his age enough. That he needs to have more fun. That his mom's death made him an adult too soon and that he lost something to grief. Rhys always felt that wasn't quite right, but now he can see it. The rest of the team spend their time being careless and stupid and entirely uncaring of the consequences of their actions. He doesn't want that for his whole life, but it strikes him that at the very least, he should allow himself some dumb summer romance.

Yes, the Cape is the last time baseball will feel like this ever again; and it may be the last time he can be young and stupid ever again.

"Well," he says, letting his voice drop down low. "I liked kissing you too."

And he'd kiss him again if Happ wasn't calling out for Aaron.  
Aaron looks at Rhys, trying to contain his smile, and his fingers brush Rhys's hand.

"You should come over later. I'll text you the address. Just come through the back garden."

Rhys feels his heartbeat quicken.

"Sure."

"You promise?"

"Yeah. I'll be there. What time?"

"Give it an hour."

Aaron squeezes his hand, really quick, and jumps down the bleachers, heading back towards Happ. He glances back, his eyes glistening.

Rhys hops back on his bike after dropping his stuff back home. He takes ten minutes o decide what to wear, and settles on a simple shorts and t-shirt combination, because as much as he hates admitting it, he wants to impress Aaron, but he also knows by now Aaron is a firm believer in wearing whatever comes up next in the clothes pile and really couldn't tell his efforts apart.

Aaron's host family are old-timer Cape League volunteers, an older couple with adult children working in Boston who have been hosting players for 20 years. They live in West Harwich, so Rhys has to head down the road towards Dennis Port.  
The cicadas are chattering in the lavender bushes, the residual heat rising slowly from the sun-drenched grass. The house is dressed in grey pine shingles, the dimly lit veranda windows trimmed with red paint. Rhys sneaks to the back, leaving his bike leaned on the picket fence in the small neighboring alley that leads down to the beach.

The backyard is immaculate in the darkness, blue and purple hydrangeas adorning the slightly wild lawn, bayberry bushes and wild indigo furnishing the flowerbeds. Small lanterns are scattered around, casting warm yellow light on the plants and the flat stone path leading back to the house. Rhys fishes his phone out from his pocket, scanning the amber rectangles of the curtained windows for Aaron, when his attention is drawn to a screened wooden enclosure against the back façade and the sound emanating from it.

It's an outdoor shower, Rhys knows it, the Bradfords have one. They're pretty popular here and it's a conversation subject around the team — did you use it? did you use it naked? did you see a spider?  
Well, someone's using this one. He can see a pair of feet from underneath the panel, and he can see a worn grey striped hoodie hooked to the outside of the door handle.  
Aaron's hoodie.

Rhys ponders it all for a moment, and then springs from his crouched position and saunters over to the enclosure, a strange, daring kind of anticipation pulsing through his veins.  
He comes right close up to the smooth wood, listens to the water running. He considers knocking, but instead he just sticks his shoe underneath the panel.  
At first he thinks he might have to do something more noticeable, but he hears the door unlatch, and he walks over, his hand shaking, sneaking in and locking behind himself.  
Aaron's clothes are piled up on the wooden flooring in the changing area of the enclosure. He can guess Aaron's long, naked shape in the corner of his left eye, but doesn't look, is too scared to look, sees Aaron's discarded boxers at his feet.

There are no words, but Rhys kicks off his shoes and socks and drops his pants and tugs off his shirt, struggles out of his underwear, in the warm night air underneath the stars. He wants this. He wants this so bad, there's no questioning it.  
His whole body throbbing, he turns, and finally looks up.

Aaron's looking him up and down, wet hair sticking to his face. And yeah, they've seen each other at the beach, almost naked, but now Rhys's eyes can drop down from Aaron's navel, along his happy trail, down to his bush and, wow, he definitely is not small, and that makes him feel some sort of way.

There are questions, and doubts, and fear and hesitation, but Rhys isn't listening. He lies back, and lets the bubbling want inside his stomach take the wheel.

Rhys steps closer, and closer, until he's so close that Aaron can pull him down underneath the warm jet, eagerly wrapping his bare body around his. And it's the strangest sensation Rhys has ever felt: slick, hot, soft, all over his chest and legs and neck and crotch.  
And then, Aaron kisses him, hungrier than Rhys thought he would, and he loses track of his thoughts as he kisses back, letting everything spiral uncontrollably.

It feels incredible, so right, so exciting: Aaron’s shaky breath against his mouth as they kiss, his roaming, yet timid hands on Rhys’s slick skin. It's so novel, and the shift from the anxious bareness of the bike ride to the sensual wetness of Aaron’s body is so brutal and unexpected Rhys almost doesn't register how much he wants to touch Aaron back.

When he does there’s no going back.  
They’re all pressed up against each other, making out languidly underneath the falling water, and if you peeked underneath the panels you could see two pairs of feet slotted in with each other, toes curling up, weight shifting from front to back and side to side. Rhys is hard now, and doesn’t care that Aaron knows, because Aaron’s hard too, and god, being like this with another man is so perfect, so beautiful, like a revelation, ten times better than what he imagined in his bed at night, grinding his hips against Aaron's and running his hands up to his shoulderblades.

The feeling of a hard cock that’s not his own pressing into the crease of his groin is so strange, and Aaron’s long and cut and Rhys needs to reach down, needs to touch.  
His hand makes Aaron flinch and let out a small gasp against his mouth.  
Slowly, he starts pulling and stroking at Aaron's dick, his body tingling with the way it fits in his hands and the way Aaron squirms against him. He drives his hips against Aaron's tummy, because the thought and the sensation is so arousing, and he needs contact, and Aaron almost reads his mind, wrapping his long fingers around him and kissing his neck.

It's short-lived but heavenly, fuzzy and messy and wonderful with Rhys's hand petting at Aaron's hip and kissing languorously at his mouth and chin and throat, their breathing deep and heavy, the water running down their bodies, tapping onto the wooden slabs at their feet.  
Rhys comes against Aaron's lean stomach, and Aaron follows suit like he'd been trying very hard to wait for Rhys, with a spent exhale against his shoulder.

Everything washes down the drain.


	8. Fourth of July

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for more explicit content!

“Dude, you swing like... like a baby horse on stilts.”

“I told ya! I’m no good! Austin tried to fix it.”

Rhys doesn’t even know what to fix. The batting stance isn’t too terrible, but it looks wrong, and the way Aaron almost falls over to reach for pitches... at least he’s not scared of the ball. He seems thrown off by the heaviness of the wood bat, though.

“I ain’t a hitter.” Aaron concludes, tossing him the batting helmet.

“Hopefully you end up in the AL then.”

It’s the Fourth of July and they’re in Hyannis. The sun is bright, the rest of the Mariners are playing catch and tossing balls around for warm up.  
There was a parade in Chatham earlier, with the Anglers on their own float and such. Hyannis is a little more low-key, but the celebrations were still beyond what Rhys was used to, with the parade and the main street decorated and the boats all adorned with mini flags. The field is wrapped in red, white, and blue, the concession houses behind home plate draped with bunting, and the bleachers are already packed with people.

Aaron is starting.  
Aaron is the perfect pitcher, Rhys catches himself thinking as he watches him adjust his belt on the mound. His arms, long and flexible, big hands, figure like a distended slingshot band ready to flex.

Somehow, they’re facing Manaea again, and everyone is settling in to watch a classic Cape League pitchers’ duel.  
Last time, he made short work of Rhys and the others, so they have to hope Aaron keeps to his ace ways, which Rhys doesn’t doubt a second.  
Manaea is a big, lean Samoan lefty with a huge toothy smile, messy black hair, and tight pants. He was kind of a write off when Coach E ran down the Harbor Hawks lineup to them at the start of the season, but he’d turned out the scariest pitcher in the damn league. Though he’s not quite so scary up there laughing on the mound as he gets ready to throw his warmups.

Aaron comes up to Rhys in the dugout, grinning, as Rhys ties his shoes.  
He leans in very close next to his ear, with a small giggle.

“Do you think he’s hot?” he whispers.

What a strange question. Rhys is pretty sure he’s never been asked that. It’s... thrilling. It’s exciting, having someone that can ask him what he thinks of a “he” in that way.

“Who?”

“Manaea!”

Rhys can’t help but smile.

“He’s cute.”

“I think he’s hot.”

Rhys looks at Manaea, the fluffy hair, the light brown skin. Definitely cute, but not really Rhys's type. He likes feeling big, and Manaea's his size.

“He’s too tall.”

“I like tall.”

Rhys turns towards Aaron, who’s smiling at him underneath hooded eyes. Oh, so he’s trying to flirt. Interesting. Rhys snorts, and they all head to the field for the anthem.  
The game is everything the crowd hoped for. Manaea is ruthless, practically unhittable.  
But Rhys likes to think Aaron is just as good. The first hit against him comes in the fifth.  
There's only so much you can do against Manaea's 96 fastball, though, and though Rhys bloops a weak single that gets JaCoby to third, that's as far as they get.  
They waste Aaron’s stellar start, and lose 1-0.

It's fine, though. It's the Fourth of July. It's a party. They're all going to JaCoby's host family's house for a big barbecue and underage beers.

Aaron is already here with Happ when Rhys cycles into the big beach house's driveway, fresh changed out of his clothes and into a tacky American flag tank top he bought with Ervin and Mancini for this very purpose at the Orleans Mall last week.  
The fire pit is lit, casting flickering orange-rimmed shadows across the lawn and the white picket fence as the boys mill around the yard, straying over to the grill, shotgunning beers in small packs. The sky is dark, the air smells of smoke and meat, the sea breeze ruffles the leaves of the small ornamental trees that dot the garden. The house, all decked out in pastel blue siding, looms over, the veranda windows open, dim light filtering through where the pitchers have elected residence in the patio lounge. Music drifts from speakers propped around the wicker bench where AJ Reed and Skoglund are enjoying their hot dogs.  
Rhys lets his feet carry him through the small crowd, weaving inbetween the loose, wandering groups. He finds Aaron by the cornhole game. He grabs two beers and a meat skewer.  
They all play, sipping from their cans, shouting and complaining, ever the competitors. Ervin, who's still having a great season, isn't so good at this. Rhys, for himself, dominates, and he brags to everyone around that will hear it, Aaron laughing at him.  
The night is strange, cardboard cut-out people and stop-motion memories, Rhys a little drunk, sun-soaked and well-fed, the usual dip in his chest from the loss filled up with laughter, light beer, and sunburns.

Rhys can’t tell why his eyes get locked in with Aaron but once they do it’s like telepathy.  
Five minutes later, Aaron’s squeezed at the back of Rhys’s bike, an arm wrapped round his chest as they ride down towards Aaron’s host family’s house.  
His chest is warm and broad against Rhys’s back. His curls flutter against Rhys’s neck.

The house is quiet and silent, the family off to a neighbor’s barbecue. Aaron leads him into the basement where he and Happ share a room — they don’t pair pitchers together, lest jealousy settles in.

Aaron’s bed is made, Happ’s is a mess. The whole room is pretty messy, in fact, but Aaron seems to be the rigorous, clean one. They kick off their shoes, and they’re kissing, lying down onto the bed to make out, tasting of Bud Light.  
Rhys lets his hands visit Aaron's body as the clothes drop, his fingers grabbing softly at Aaron's plump pitcher's ass. It's all so natural, Rhys feels strangely experienced, the way his clueless motions make Aaron tremble and gasp. Though he's not making much noise at all, Rhys can tell he's getting to him. For himself, he can't hold a moan when the heel of Aaron's palm presses against his hard cock through his open fly, timidly almost, his fingertips grazing across his boxers.

Rhys pulls Aaron down for the hungriest kiss he's ever given someone. He feels hot, he feels wanted, he feels impossibly eager. He wants this so bad. They're both tipsy enough that things don't matter and sober enough that they're in complete control. It's perfect.

Aaron scrambles off Rhys suddenly, staggers off the bed and starts raiding Happ's bedside table. Wordlessly, he lobs a string of multicolored condoms and a bottle of lube at Rhys.

"Ambitious." Rhys smiles, looking at the dozen of condoms in his hands.

Aaron just giggles childishly, and throws himself back on the bed, kissing Rhys sloppily, all his weight on Rhys's chest. It's all a new taste, a new pleasure for both of them, and they're both savoring it.  
They make out for a little while, letting themselves get nice and hard, humping comfortably.  
They've got time. Rhys wants it to last a little, even though his heart is beating fast and he's craving for release already. There's wrist touching and Rhys's hand in Aaron's bushy curly hair, it's weird and tender and horny.  
He rolls them over so he's straddling Aaron, and slips his hand down Aaron's boxers, groping at him, fascinated with how unexpectedly big he is again.

"You're huge." He groans against Aaron's cheek.

"Shut up." Aaron mutters, catching Rhys's lips with his, pushing his hips up against Rhys's hand.

"Okay, rude. 'S a compliment. Oh—" He moans when Aaron pushes his own hand in Rhys's underwear.

He wonders why Aaron's cagey about his size, but only for a second, because it's only a matter of time until they're both naked and humping, Aaron letting Rhys grab at his thighs and ass, fingertips exploring. He lifts his leg a little to give him access, all hot breath and hooded eyes, his shorts around his ankles. He kicks them off, and wraps his leg around Rhys's.

Rhys is so hard.  
Aaron is stroking his cock a little experimentally, his thumb playing with the foreskin curiously, his eyes glancing down to take a look. But they both know what they want. Rhys takes the tube of lube and smears some on his fingers. He's really got no idea what he's doing but he's got a strong urge to do it, without a doubt. Aaron's breath comes out shaky against his mouth when Rhys moves his fingers gingerly back between his asscheeks, and he prods, tentatively, his other hand still on Aaron's dick. There's a moment when he thinks he might chicken out, but Aaron gives his jaw a soft bite and he's gone from then on, too far gone.

Aaron's little moans send more blood down to his crotch, the little thrusts of his hips just incredibly hot, the way his hand reaches back to spread himself open for Rhys, one leg pulled up. His cheek against Rhys’s cheek, the soft subvocal sounds his throat is making, the way Rhys wants all of him but feels almost scared to hurt him, the way Aaron seems to abandon himself to him so completely.

Rhys picks a red condom and slides it on while Aaron breathes heavily, pulling his second leg back against his chest. His hands are on his crotch, but it’s more like he’s hiding his dick than touching it. Rhys bats him off with his free hand as he spreads a generous amount of lube on his own dick.  
Aaron looks at him like a puppy that’s been caught doing something wrong.

“It’s so hot that you're so big.” Rhys says in his ear, and when he looks up Aaron’s all flushed up.

He doesn’t know what the issue is but that probably solved it. Well, he hopes so, the way Aaron softly tugs at his own dick and pulls his legs back a little further.  
Rhys’s brain goes haywire and he takes the invitation.

He knows you’re not supposed to moan, or anything, but he can’t help it. It feels so good. Aaron’s got his hands on his shoulderblades, squeezing, his eyes closed and his mouth half-open. He’s not making a sound, but seeing how he licks his lips and wraps his ankles round Rhys’s waist, he’s enjoying it.

“You good?” Rhys manages, just to make sure.

“Uh-huh...” Aaron lets out, eyes still closed.

Feedback would help a little, but maybe he’s just not the talkative type. Rhys can tell when he’s hitting the right spot, though, the way Aaron shifts his hips to get more, the way he twists his neck a little.

It feels so right, what they’re doing, tangled on top of Aaron’s sheets, short-fused and close already, like this guilty little thing just between the two of them that yet feels so huge for Rhys.  
He kisses Aaron’s cheek, then his neck, lets the curls tickle his temple, reaches down for Aaron’s dick, big and hard in his hand, pre-come already oozing out, way more than Rhys has ever had on his own. He jacks Aaron off in rhythm with his thrusts, reveling in the weird sensation of having a cut cock in his hand, and feels the home stretch coming on.  
He’s sure this didn’t take much longer than five minutes, but he knows he needs to make sure he comes before Aaron, otherwise he might hurt him, right, and also, he really wants to do it while he’s inside Aaron.

“I’m gonna...” he warns Aaron, and all he gets is a squeeze that almost, just about sends him over the edge there, but what ends up doing it is the way Aaron tips his head back against the pillow, and lets out the quietest little moan.

Rhys swears, chokes out Aaron’s name, and forgets to jerk him off for a minute, losing the ability to multitask. Aaron just shudders and gasps underneath him as he ruts, and then when he’s finally regaining his consciousness, all his muscles spent and relaxed and his eyelids heavy, he only needs to tug at Aaron for a few seconds before he comes, spurting over both of their stomachs, and wordlessly groans in satisfaction.

Rhys pulls out, pinching the condom just like he’s always been taught to do. His head is numb, his body is buzzing. Aaron gropes for his t-shirt and wipes them both off sleepily, before slumping back onto the mattress.

Rhys lies down next to him, leaning on his elbow, and looks around a little, ears still thrumming. On the bedside table there's a framed picture of Aaron in his high school grad robes with his family around him. Tucked in the frame, a small icon of a saint whose name Rhys doesn't have the first idea about. He looks at Aaron's relaxed face, his half-lidded eyes, his messy hair.

"You do this a lot?" He asks, finally.

Aaron snorts.

"No... but I liked it a lot."

"Yeah..." Rhys says, thoughtfully. He doesn't know why he asked that. Aaron is probably a virgin. Oh god, did he just take Aaron's virginity? Rhys has done stuff with girls, just to be sure, so this is his first time with a guy, but it's not the first-first time. Well, he hopes this isn't the last time, because, wow. "Likewise."

Aaron smiles and shifts to get more comfortable, not saying anything else. Rhys looks at the image of the saint again.

"You going to church on Sunday still?" He asks with a smirk — alcohol makes him a little mean.

"Yeah, you wanna come?" Aaron answers, deadpan.

"Even after what you, we, uh, this?" Rhys fumbles.

"Yeah." Aaron confirms, completely serious. "I mean, Jesus was gay."

"Oh." Rhys feels like a jerk now. Aaron obviously as it all figured out, or something, though he can't really understand it, because he's pretty sure the priest at the church Aaron is attending doesn't quite share his opinion.

"He and John were..." Aaron lifts his hands and thrusts his index finger into his fist with a stupid grin. "...boning."

That's definitely the beer talking, from what Rhys knows of Aaron, but it's just as well.  
Rhys laughs, and this is his best 4th of July yet.


	9. P-Town

They haven't had an off day in almost two weeks when Aaron texts Rhys that morning. After a storm came over the cape, two days of games had been rained out, and now they were playing catchup, the downpour washing away a trip to Nantucket and a day in New York the Bradfords had proposed Rhys could tag along to.

Aaron's name in Rhys's phone is Ace now. He's started calling him that because Aaron, though he won’t show it, does hate Baby Nola, and Rhys, after a little bit of probing, had found out that “Ace” was what his high school teammates called him. Aaron blushed the color of a burnt tomato when Rhys first tried it out; he thought that it sounded too arrogant. He didn't think he was actually an ace. Well, Rhys thought otherwise.  
So when he gets the text, right after work, it’s the name “Ace” that lights up his phone screen.

_I got the best plan for the off day on thursday I’ll tell you later!_

Rhys tries to shake it out of Aaron via text, but no dice. Aaron remains silent until he shows up at the field with a cheeky grin and almost jogs up to Rhys. Jogs! The guy never jogs, he strolls. He’s never pressed to go anywhere: the world goes at his own pace, and his pace is leisurely, aloof, tranquil, like a lazy walk along a Mississippi levee.

“So. Spit it.” Rhys says, unable to hide his smile.

Aaron’s grin is almost strangely coy. He looks like a naughty kid.

“Well... You know about Provincetown, right?”

Well, of course Rhys does, but he doesn’t know exactly which Provincetown Aaron is referring to.  
Sitting at the very tip of the Cape, where the fishhook curls back onto itself and points towards Plymouth, Provincetown is the true first landing port of the Pilgrims; but Rhys has learned it’s more than just a nice historical landmark.

Provincetown is probably the hottest gay beach resort on the East Coast. Growing up in Sacramento, Rhys always heard about it from his parents’ gay friends or colleagues discussing their vacation plans.

“Oh, we’re going to P-Town for Pride weekend, this year.”

Of course, everyone on the Cape knew about that part, and for the Mariners who hadn’t heard of it, they’d been quickly informed by JaCoby and AJ and Gordon — after all due pranking of course. Happ had been furious to lose out on a hot local girl after he’d asked her out to the A-House. A group of guys usually drove up there every year, just to see, and, Rhys assumes, for the cheap thrills of potentially being accosted by another man and having the weird, self-gratifying opportunity to refuse his advances and reaffirm their heterosexuality.

So yes, Rhys knows about Provincetown.

“Right, well, I was at the gym and there’s a few guys from other teams there, ya know. And uh, one of 'em has a car and he’s gonna be going up there with a couple others and I was wondering if you’d wanna come with us.”

It's like Aaron's a kid and he just asked Rhys for a puppy. It occurs to Rhys that, coming from where he comes from, he’s never really had the chance to see a number of gay people all in the same place. Maybe he’s never been to Pride. The idea of Provincetown must seem like the same Promised Land the Pilgrims hoped for when they made landfall.

And sure, it does to Rhys too, a whole town where people like him can feel safe, where he can forget that he’s different. A foreign country where Rhys was born, only to then be ripped away from and brought to a strange new one; a motherland where he longed to return, where everything could feel so normal, where everything could make sense.

But despite the exception of the Cape, despite how some surreal nights Rhys’s crossing of the bottleneck a month ago seems like it could have been a tornado sweeping over Kansas, Rhys can’t help but feel the real world knocking at his door once again.

“Why do they want to go up there?” He finally says, as they slowly walk towards the bleachers.

Aaron seems unfazed.

“Oh I don’t know. They were talking about it so I asked if I could come.”

Rhys raises his eyebrows. Has the Cape really numbed Aaron that much? He would think growing up gay in Louisiana would have given him more of an instinct for that kind of thing, but it’s like he’s drunk on all this freedom and novelty and sex.

“Um... Dude. I don’t think they want to go up there for the same reason as us.”

It takes Aaron a second to understand what Rhys means, but he shrugs it off.

“Doesn’t matter, it’s not like we’re gonna be hanging around with them once we get there, right?”

“I mean...”

“Oh come on Rhys. Please. I wanna go.”

In a sense, Aaron is right. Neither of them has a car, and this is probably going to be their only opportunity to go.  
But it’s also like walking into the lion’s den, isn’t it?

“I’ll think about it.”

That night, when he takes his weekly call from his dad, he’s still thinking about it.  
Over the flat horizon, beyond the freshwater marshes, the last lights of the long-since-set sun cut out the low skyline of beach houses and wooden wire poles against a steadily darkening blue background.  
The day had been crushingly hot, the humidity still hanging low in the air, slowly ushered away by the swirling breeze that had started to pick up.

Rhys sits out in the back garden on one of the Bradfords’ white-and-navy sun loungers, enjoying the damp coolness of the night as his dad updates him on everything that’s been going down back home.

“And how's been going outside of baseball?” Rhys’s dad asks, with hope in his voice.

Rhys knows he’s been holding back most of his social life on the Cape from his father— his social life being mostly Aaron, at this point. He knows his dad can feel it, too, and that it makes him anxious, and Rhys, well, Rhys feels guilty.

"Oh, well... you know, not much, I'm so focused--"

"Are you trying to make me believe you're not doing anything exciting and irresponsible? What kind of son did I raise you to be?" His father laughs down the phone. "Ever since you got there it's all work and no play from what you're telling me! And I thought you'd have fun on the Cape..."

He did tell his dad about the few parties he went to, and the beach bonfires. But not about all the times in the past three weeks he’s sneaked off with Aaron for a make out session or a handjob or more. They don’t talk much, but he’s become familiar with the whole length of Aaron’s neck, where the freckles on his hip are, what makes him gasp.  
He doesn’t remember how he survived before this.

“I am having fun!” Rhys protests, somewhat half heartedly. “Hey, for example...” he hesitates, but decides it’s a safe thing to discuss. “The guys are going up to Provincetown on Thursday. Just to see, you know.”

“Oh, that’s good. It’s nice up there. You’re going, right?”

“I... I’m considering it. I don’t know.”

“Come on! You’ll have fun. Let loose a little bit, I told you... you won’t get many more opportunities like this one, trust my word on this.”

Rhys pauses. Even his dad is on Aaron’s side. Well, his dad doesn’t know the real implications and risks to all of this, but he’s also right in reminding Rhys to let go. Coming onto Aaron was one step. Now he’s going to have to battle himself again to take the next one.

So on Thursday afternoon, he’s on the curb when a truck pulls in in front of the Bradfords’ house, backpack full of water, beer, sunscreen, and snacks.  
Aaron’s in the backseat waving at him but Rhys immediately looks at the three other guys and wonders why he threw carefulness out the window.  
The guys Aaron had sympathized with at the gym were Sean Manaea, Aaron Judge, and... Rhys has no idea who the last guy is.  
He can’t believe Aaron. Their fiercest pitching opponent and the guy who brought his college baseball postseason to a brutal stop? Judge had been a monster against Sac State’s pitching last month. Rhys and his teammates should have made short work of Fresno, but Judge, and luck, had decided otherwise.

Judge, a 6’7 mountain of a guy, is riding shotgun, looking kind of cramped in the old piece of junk Manaea’s driving. Rhys rarely feels small, being 6’5 and over 200 pounds — maybe not in the preferred muscle-to-fat ratio, though it never stopped him from hitting taters — but Judge is humongous next to him.

So Aaron shifts to the middle seat to let Rhys in, and Judge turns around, baring all his teeth.

"Hey! Hoskins! How are you?"

"Good, man, good." Rhys replies automatically, because Judge IS a nice guy and Rhys doesn’t like having any rivals or enemies — he just wishes Aaron had warned him of who exactly would be making up the party.

"Glad you could make it, Hoskins!" Manaea shouts over the motor as they drive off.

Rhys whips out his phone and texts Aaron.

_why didn’t you tell me THOSE guys were coming_

Aaron notices his crappy little touchscreen Sony Ericsson buzzing and takes it out, reading the text. Rhys can feel him glancing over.

_what do u mean? does it matter?_

_I’ll explain when we get there  
Who’s the guy in the backseat_

_ ok.... luke weaver from brewster_

Luke Weaver is Judge’s teammate and he looks as fresh out of high school as anyone can, with his overlong neck rivaling Aaron’s, and his stupid Justin Bieber haircut, also rivaling Aaron’s. He looks nice enough, though, sitting there with his hands on his thighs, a little sheepish.

There’s a strange atmosphere in the car as they leave Harwich and get on the main road, heading towards the Upper Cape. Rhys doesn’t know what it is exactly but there’s a tenseness. Nobody’s talking. Rhys wonders if it’s because of him, if they were all talking before. But somehow he knows it probably isn’t. There’s something out of place, something unsaid. He just can’t quite pinpoint what.

Outside, as the marshes and pines zip by, the midday sun pounds down hard from high in the sky.  
The windows are open, and Manaea’s hair, unconstricted by the hat Rhys had usually seen him wearing, is absolutely huge, dark and curly and thick, afro-styled around his head, flowing in the wind.

The radio plays pop-rock summer tunes, and they drive in polite silence instead of the rowdy banter Rhys expected.

He figures it all out just as they pass Welfleet.  
No one in this car is going to Provincetown to gawk at gay culture.  
His heart rate quickens. That’s insane. That’s so many guys. Surely not, right? Maybe Aaron didn’t notice. He’s not great at noticing other gay people. But it makes so much sense.

When they finally get there, with barely more than a dozen words spoken in the common assumed agreement of their trip, Manaea parks the car in a public parking lot with minimal effort and they all hop out.

“Okay.” Manaea glances around the group, “Uh, so if everyone could meet back up here at 1:30 AM... and please don’t get too drunk I don’t want puke in my car...” he drifts off timidly. He’s as much of a pushover as Rhys imagined, it’s kind of heartbreaking.

Judge seems to notice it too and sighs.

“If you ain’t back here on time you can find your own way home. And don’t puke in the freaking car or I’ll see to you. Okay?”

It’s kind of cute that he stood up for Manaea, Rhys has to admit. They all agree on the time, and Manaea slaps the roof of the car.

“Okay, um, well, see you guys later.”

And with that he makes a beeline towards one of the alleys and away in the blink of an eye. Within seconds, their group splits up and disappears, leaving Rhys and Aaron standing in the parking lot.

“Huh.” Aaron shrugs, and Rhys is baffled as to how he remains completely oblivious of what just happened. “So what were you texting me about?” He asks, without an ounce of sarcasm.

“Nevermind that.” Rhys waves off, still looking at the alley Manaea disappeared into. “Why’d you not tell me they were all...?” He gestures around. He doesn’t know if calling them gay would be right. He doesn’t know if calling himself gay would be right, hell. Doesn’t that entail being out and proud? Rhys doesn’t know.

Aaron’s adorable little face scrunches a little in confusion.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh my god.” Rhys has to pinch the bridge of his nose. What’s Aaron going to do, later in life, when he needs to spot a guy he can hook up with on the down low on a road trip? "I, uh. They're all here for the same reason as us. Did you not notice?"

Aaron's eyes widen in realization.

"Oh. Dang."

"Right?" Rhys feels a nervous smile stretch across his face.

"That's crazy. I don't believe you."

"Dude. They all went off on their own. Nobody talked at all. Have you never hung out with straight guys?"

"I mean... yeah... but..." Aaron looks indecisive, maybe a little confused. Rhys decides they can't just stand on this parking lot all night.

"Okay, it doesn't matter. Let's go. I'm starving."

The town is quaint and beautiful, the sea lapping almost up to the foot of the shingled houses like all the other ones scattered across the Cape. Those ones, though, are painted pastel colors and draped in small rainbow flags, the display windows on the main street full of Pride t-shirts and the occasional sex toy shop, memorabilia emblazoned with slogans about the benefits of lesbianism stacked in postcard stands.  
The cobbled street is buzzing with middle aged couples strolling by or hanging out at terraces with cocktails and beers, flamboyant waiters zigzagging between tables and drag queens shoving show flyers into their hands as they walk by. It's an explosion of familiar foreignness.

Aaron is looking around, eyes wide open, taking it all in. He looks overwhelmed almost, arms hanging by his sides as they walk side by side. And Rhys gets a powerful need just then, to just take his hand and hold it. It would feel so right, and nobody would look twice. They'd blend right in.  
Aaron's looking up at a bear flag hanging from a flagpole on the façade of a mauve-painted shop, and that's when Rhys makes his move. Lacing his fingers round Aaron's, softly, unassumedly.  
Aaron doesn't even look down. He squeezes Rhys's hand, softly, and they keep walking.

Rhys feels so warm he might explode like a supernova.

They sit down together at a restaurant terrace, all the tables around them occupied with paired-up men in stylish beach clothes. Rhys feels a little inadequate in his cutoff shorts and sun bleached polo shirt. Aaron’s khaki shorts aren’t any better. But they sit together and eat fish burgers with chunky french fries. Rhys isn’t thinking of Judge or Manaea or Weaver. He’s laughing with Aaron, eating with Aaron, feeling safe and secure as the sun descends into the horizon.

After eating, they wander around the shops, and find matching souvenir tank tops printed with an outline of the Cape and the words, in rainbow script: “I GOT LUCKY IN PROVINCETOWN”. Rhys doesn’t even know when he’d wear it, but they both buy one. On the way to the beach, they take off their t-shirts, change into their new tops, and roll up the legs of their shorts a little too high.  
They fit right in among the flow of boys streaming into the town ahead of the club hour, and Rhys thinks Aaron looks cute. He stares shamelessly, at the way his ass looks great with the shorts cuffed just over mid thigh, at how his honey-tan skin turns ballplayer white upwards of his knee.

Aaron looks grown, confident in the golden hour, his boyish face imbued with something new and mature and exciting, something that wasn’t there when Rhys first saw him a month ago at Whitehouse Field.

They flop down on the beach, which is half-deserted, and Rhys takes out the beers, joking that they should stick them in the frigid damn water to get them colder.  
It's fine, though: they drink their warm beers and with the help of alcohol they kiss shamelessly, tangled in the sand just like Rhys had wanted to back on Merkel Beach, hands in Aaron's curls, the deep cerulean sky above them their only concern: unwatched, unseen, out in the open as the stars drift into view.

They decide to hit the A-House at the point where Aaron can't keep his hands out of Rhys's pockets. They both reckon they won't get ID'd, and they don't, somehow.  
The inside is like a house, with nautical artifacts all over the walls and hanging from wood beams, it's packed to the brim, and there's a lot of half naked guys. But Rhys only has eyes for Aaron, the way his tank top hangs off his chest and lets him see the scattered chest hairs and the brown nipples and the sweat rolling off his skin and dampening his temples already. Rhys walks up to the bar, playing up his six foot five, and orders two cocktails for Aaron and him as they lean on the barstools, Aaron giving him lewd kisses on the jaw.

"Shh." Rhys says, half-heartedly, handing Aaron his drink.

"Damn." The guy next to him whistles, smiling at Aaron's tipsy touchy-feeliness. "Someone wants your attention."

“I doooo.” Aaron whines, poking at him intently, tipsy and needy as all get out.

“Didn’t know they let high schoolers in here.” The guy continues with a smile, looking them up and down.

Rhys balks, definitely a little offended.

“We’re not—“

“It’s fine, it’s fine. I’m not gonna rat you out. Just watch your drink. Not that I don’t think you can handle yourself.” He gestures to Rhys, alluding to the size thing. “What brings you boys here? On holiday?”

The guy’s got somewhat of a New England accent, and he’s probably in his early thirties. Rhys can’t see very well. He’s a little shorter than Aaron, nursing a beer, and wearing tiny shorts and a tight t-shirt.

“Um, not really, but kind of.” Rhys blurts out, and immediately regrets not lying.

"What's that mean?" Tiny shorts guy smiles. "Season hands?"

"No, no, we play baseball!" Aaron chirps enthusiastically, to Rhys's horror.

He's never letting Aaron drink again. The guy’s eyebrows shoot up.

“No way. Cape League players?”

Rhys glares down at a completely oblivious Aaron.

“... yeah.” He concedes.

“Aw, that’s so cute. Terry over there told me a couple of em came up two years ago, but I never got to see. You guys meet here?”

“Yeah we’re on the same team!” Aaron nods, finishing his cocktail already.

Rhys quickly sips his to try and forget how anxious Aaron’s sudden drunken motormouth is making him. It's delicious and sweet, which does soothe him a little.

“Cute!” Tiny Shorts Guy coos.

"Okay, um." Rhys mutters, downing the rest of his drink. “Hey, Aaron. Wanna dance?” Hopefully if he gets him away from the bar he won't try to tell their whole life story to everyone in the room.

“Oh, heck yeah!” Aaron perks up. It’s appalling that he won’t even swear while drunk.

They hit the dance floor, and it's a whole other thing out there: the music pounding, the sweat-soaked bodies grinding against each other, Aaron rubbing himself to Rhys, so close, their hearts beating in rhythm with the music. Rhys forgets time. Loses himself in the sensation. Lets Aaron kiss him into oblivion, until all he feels is hot skin on skin and the fuzzy presence of the dozens of other men like a storm wrapping around them. There's hands on his shoulders and Aaron's hips, intermittently, but neither of them minds, in fact, Rhys leans into it, melting into the sensuality of it all.

They extract themselves from the fold, thirsty and a little tired, Aaron grabbing at Rhys's wrist firmly.

"I wanna... get another cocktail..." He stammers, his tan cheeks blushed up.

Rhys wants another one too. They make their way towards the bar, and then Rhys sees the digital clock.

1:17 AM.

"Shit!" He shouts, spinning around to face a smiling Aaron. "We gotta fucking go!"

"Do we gotta?" Aaron pouts.

"Jesus, yeah, come ON!"

He picks up his bag from the cloakroom, and drags a protesting Aaron out.

"But I'm havin' fun!"

Outside, the moist, cool air seizes up on their sweaty chest and shoulders. Rhys leads them through the crowd of smoking and conversing men, weaving around towards what he thinks he remembers is the way to the parking lot, though he's a little dizzy, what with the mixed drinks.

"Hey!" A voice calls them.

Rhys looks back. It's Tiny Shorts Guy, flanked with two big, round guys with their shirts off. He's waving.

"Baseball boys! Good luck!"

Rhys waves back awkwardly, still not really sure what to do with the knowledge these guys now are aware of their existence— what if they do make it to the majors? What rumors would they start? It's of little consequence right now, though. They've got very little time to make it to the parking lot before Manaea drives off and leaves them stranded. So he has poor, tipsy Aaron run with him up the hill.  
When they get there with a minute to spare, panting, the other three are already there, and it's a peculiar scene.

Sure, Aaron and Rhys are slick with sweat, wearing pink muscle tanks and hiked up shorts, Rhys's neck adorned with a hickey; but the others aren't in any better state. Weaver looks like he decided to try drag make-up; Manaea is covered in glitter; Judge has ostensibly lost his shirt and is wearing a rainbow lei. The three of them are standing there with expressions that range from impassible to badly-disguised sheepishness.

There's a moment of recognition where they all look at each other, but nobody says anything. Everybody knows. It's all better left unspoken.  
So they stuff themselves back into Manaea's truck, and they drive off.  
Rhys looks out the windows as the neon-lit beach houses and small packs of half-naked men drift by on Bradford Street, taking the last few dregs of Provincetown in, committing it to memory, not quite down from the high of the night club still, heart fast in his chest from the running.  
Manaea takes a left, and they all turn to watch and hear the last slivers of pink light and pop music fade into the darkness of the Province Lands. They look hilarious, an uncanny gathering of clowns, crammed in the car looking like rainbow-painted Pride Parade rejects, washed out in the tumble-dryer and left out on a nightclub sidewalk, all sad-looking and disheveled. There's a story behind Judge's purple sunglasses, behind the Mardi Gras beads on Weaver's neck, behind the confetti stuck in Manaea's hair. There's a story behind their part-stunned, part-ashamed, part-exhilarated faces. And there is definitely something new behind their eyes and around their shoulders in the way they carry themselves, and it's clear as day that nothing will ever be the same again. There's something in the car screaming to be yelled, for a bond to be created, but years of travel teams and locker rooms has told them to expect and want nothing but silence.  
So for a while there's no other sound than the night air whistling by idly as Manaea drives prudently along the unlit road, and something swells and rises in Rhys's chest, a kind of undue and premature nostalgia.

He thinks about where they are, here in the middle of nowhere at the terminal end of Route 6, and he thinks about how if they just kept driving the highway would take them all the way back home, all the way back to the edge of California, the road like a lifeline traced right through the country back to everything he knows, back to normalcy. And with a spark of drunken fury he wants to take the largest pair of scissors known to man and cut the thread, snip it off like a telephone wire. Wants to stay forever, doesn't want to think about what's at the end of the road back to reality. Here, driving on Route 6, westbound to the rest of his life, he wants to abandon ship, forget his name, leave and never come back, answer the siren song of his queer desires.  
He sits there and stews, despising himself for being afraid somewhat at the A-House, for not being like Aaron, so stupid and so entranced with want and fulfillment that he doesn't care for carefulness.

Yet he knows the world will keep going tomorrow. He'll come home eventually, there's nothing he can do to stop the march of time, very little he would do to walk out of the path he's made for himself, and he knows that. But in the dark, the five of them sitting in the car staring out at the blackened dunes look like a still life conversation piece, frozen in time and space, forever driving along the thin wrist of the Cape. And thanks to the mystical powers of this baseball-addled sandbank on the ocean, for a few minutes, it seems to Rhys that anything would be possible if he just took the step, cut the cord, and let the bobbin unravel.


	10. Final Day at Fenway Park

The Fenway Park workout is the last day off of the summer.  
Boston is hot, heavy, noisy, a weight of lead on their shoulders as Happ parks his car near a gas station.  
The concept of an urban ballpark is not exactly foreign to Rhys, but the lack of parking is baffling. Happ, who's from Pittsburgh, rants and raves the whole way about how maybe he's a yinzer, and maybe Pittsburgh is hell to drive in, but at least it's not Boston. He drives his beat-up Sedan like a local, and in the back seat, Aaron, JaCoby and Rhys exchange glances at every one of his ranting protests.

They've been to Fenway once already, for CCBL Night, which was definitely nice. To be invited back, for real this time, to be seen and tested by dozens of scouts, is a little nervewracking. They've grown used to the stands swelling with the golf-shirted minions of major league teams back on the Cape, but to see them so clearly sitting there in an empty Fenway Park while they complete drills is something else entirely: to be standing there on the field, see the enormity of the ballpark and all the green and red around them, imagining Ted Williams and Pedro Martinez walking among them, is dizzying, and exciting, gets Rhys's pulse going like crazy with anticipation that one day, he might be back here for real.  
As he takes batting practice, he hits a couple line drives off the Monster, and hearing the hollow, metallic sound of the ball hitting the wall awakens something in the back of his chest, makes all his hair stand up on the back of his neck.  
The next pitch, he takes high and deep over the Monster.  
He stares, up above the seats, watches the ball fly and lob over the advertisement boards, and everything becomes more concrete, more real.  
His teammates woop and clap. Coach E makes eye contact with him and nods.

"Reggie was right about you." he tells him. "You ain't the first freshman to hit one out of this place, but I don't see flyballs like that on every one of these kids."

Next to the other pitchers, hands dug in his back pockets in obvious faux confidence, Aaron smiles at him. Once his turn is done, Rhys jogs over, and Aaron gives him a small butt pat.

"Nice one."

Over by the wall, two Yarmouth-Dennis guys sneak out of the scoreboard door. Aaron notices that Rhys notices.

"Guys have been going inside to see..." he hesitates, his green eyes hooded. "Wanna go?"

Rhys is hardly going to say no. Aaron's clearly been itching to for the past hour.  
So they casually stroll towards the wall, where guys are shagging the balls that end up in the outfield. Rhys pushes the door open, and just like that, they're inside.

Rhys doesn't know what he imagined but it wasn't that. A narrow, low-ceiling passageway, slanted like a concrete attic. A couple folding chairs, wires, green metal and number plates all around along the whole long length of the alley. From the holes and slits in the scoreboard, the sun draws patterns on the floor and walls, in yellow dots and stripes, dust dancing in the golden rays.  
It takes his breath away for a few seconds, and then he notices: the hundreds of names, signatures and scribblings painted and scrawled across the pillars and walls. Names he doesn't recognize, some he does. He'd heard about it, but it really hits him in person.

"Wow." Aaron lets out.

"Dude..." Rhys gapes. "That is so cool."

"Let's sign ours." Aaron immediately says.

There's a couple sharpies left on the ledge next to the door, probably for this purpose. They look at each other, and decide to go boldly further into the beast, ducking underneath the buttresses. They choose a corner, between names they don't recognize. Rhys writes his name in capital letters, Aaron in his charming, kind of girly lowercases. The date; the name of their team. Rhys lets his arms drop to his sides, admiring their handiwork.  
Aaron's hand stays up. He seems to ponder his course of action, and then, with a confident hand, puts the pen back to the concrete, and draws a small heart.

A weird warped sound escapes Rhys’s throat. He himself isn’t sure what it means but it’s there, and something else that is there is Aaron’s lips on his as he gently pushes him against the wall, and they kiss for a few seconds, Rhys’s back on the warm metal.

Aaron quickly pulls away, and looks at him in the eyes.

“I’m really gonna miss you.”

It hits Rhys like a ton of bricks : in a week, the season’s over, they go to the playoffs because they’ve already qualified, what with being in first place in the division with a reasonably large margin, and then, Aaron will go back to the bayou and Rhys to the Central Valley.  
There’s no reason to think they’ll keep contact. There’s every reason not to. This is a summer fling, something to be kept in the sun-beat, stuffy entrails of a scoreboard, and neither of them ever expected or wanted it to be anything more than that, right? It’s complicated enough as it is. Baseball is more important. Rhys can make some concessions for a kiss in brackets and a lot of furtive sex on single beds, but he won’t risk his career on a long-distance relationship at 19. He’s grown-up enough to realize that — at least for the moment while he's off the Cape and free from its charms, the car fumes and big-city crowds clearing his head somehow. His thing with Aaron had always been a dead-end.

“Well, I’ll miss you too.” Rhys lets out, his fingers brushing against Aaron’s wrists. He thinks about what to say. “This summer was the best.”

Aaron readjusts his hat, and smiles all bittersweet.

“Yeah... it was.”

The drills only last so long, because the other teams are coming over for a second and third round, but they aren’t ushered out just yet: they’re given a small tour. They sit in the 1930’s grandstand benches, see the red seat, gauge just how high Rhys’s home run ball went as they scrutinize the rooftop parking lot and Lansdowne Street from the top of the Monster.

Before they finally leave, looking to spend the rest of the day in Boston, Happ allows Rhys a bathroom break.

Rhys runs through the deserted concourse to the closest toilets, and when he’s done, he goes to wash his hands.  
He glances up above the sink, and catches his own eye in the mirror.  
Under the harsh light, Rhys looks at himself for what seems like the first time in weeks.  
He looks... different.  
The sun has bleached his hair a lighter shade of blond than the California summer usually does somehow. Some curls that cling close to his skull look nearly gold. His cheeks and neck are pink and sunburnt, the curve of his shoulders a little flaky. Nearly-clear stubble is fighting his shaving habit. But there's something else, something invisible, maybe in his eyes or in the way he stands— he doesn't know. He usually always feels familiar to himself. It's a foreign feeling in a foreign place, finding out this half-summer in a near-island in Massachusetts has branded him somewhat. Has anchored him somehow, like so many fishing hooks stabbed into his skin, to a newfound place on a life-spectrum he'd thought impenetrable. Left him noticeably changed.

He wonders, just then, if this is another thing he can wipe clean from his slate, like a bad game or a batting slump. If he can go back to that previous version of himself, before the Cape, before Aaron, before the wind and the sea eroded his rough edges and sculpted him into a slightly different shape that slots in a slightly different life.  
But he knows answers to things he hadn't ever thought to ask the questions for now. He's made choices, engraved their consequences into his brain like tattoos, he chose his path and walled other avenues for things and people he'll never be. In another world, another Rhys partied all summer instead of working at his craft; another Rhys pushed Aaron off when he leaned in by the concession stand; another Rhys got scared after the kiss and never sneaked in Aaron's shower; another Rhys never even let Aaron get close; and another Rhys left everything to be with him.  
He's none of these. He'll have to play with the hand he dealt himself.

The Mariners get knocked out by Orleans in the first round despite Ervin's best efforts. It's a gut punch. The season fades, anti-climatically.  
So they all pack up their things, work their last shifts and pay their last weekly stipends to their families. Say goodbye to the kids and the parents, exchange email addresses and make sure phone numbers are right, promise to stay in touch.

Rhys kisses Aaron by the pines on Merkel Beach, way out of sight.  
Goodbyes are made at Whitehouse Field.  
Ms Bradford drops Rhys off at Logan two hours before Aaron's family does. As Rhys's plane takes off, skimming the water of the Massachusetts Bay, he closes his eyes and lets gravity pin him to his seat, tearing him away from the dream, the magic releasing his grip on him, and he'd almost be relieved if he weren't a little too sad to leave Aaron.

Of course they might see each other again.  
But the road is uncertain.  
And for now, Rhys has to let go of the sandbank, let go of the shingles, let go of the chainlink and goldenrod. Let go of Aaron, LSU freshman and everything he represents.  
Go home and leave the last frontier where youth and baseball converge. Go home, and resume the course of his life, with a new beat in the song he marches to.

Go back to Sacramento, and grow up.


	11. Epilogue: The Draft

Rhys is watching the draft on TV with his dad and sister like everyone else. It's not like he's going to be drafted within the first few rounds, anyway: he's a realist, and his agent pretty much gave him an idea of what to expect. So they all sit back on the couch with snacks, Rhys and his dad with beers in hand, waiting for the Astros to make the first pick.  
But Rhys could care less about Brady Aiken or Carlos Rodon. What he's looking for is the name everyone's draft predictions have pegged next to the Philadelphia Phillies' logo.

Aaron Nola, star LSU starting pitcher.  
Low 90s fastball with movement. Insane curve. Plus changeup. Great slider. Dangerous 3/4 arm slot. Command like crazy. Killed the best conference in college baseball for the past two years. Well-endowed, great kisser.

The names filter through. Kolek, Rodon, Schwarber— a surprise pick— Gordon, Jackson.  
It's the Phillies' turn.

“Who do you think they’re getting? That’s your old teammate, right, Nola?”

“Yeah.” Rhys says absently, eyes riveted to the screen.

There was one scout who'd come up and talked to him when he was a high school junior, at a Scout Ball event, one scout who'd watched his college career all the way through and had made sure one of his organization's Northeast scouts came and took a look at him in Harwich. And that guy was from the Phillies. That's the one team that Rhys is sure are interested in him.  
So he's paying close attention.

"The Philadelphia Phillies are standing by..." the disembodied voice of Greg Amsinger describes, as the TV pans to the delegations. "Gary Matthews, one of the representatives there, along with Chris Wheeler, well, these two guys are wondering, on the phone— who in the world are the Phillies taking with the seventh overall pick?"

"Has to be Nola." Rhys's dad mutters, taking a drink from his beer.

"We've already seen one surprise..." Amsinger continues. "Could we see another? We'll go back to the podium to find out who the Phils are selecting with the seventh overall pick."

Thirty seconds later, the Phillies are done deliberating. Bud Selig climbs up to the podium.

"With the seventh selection of the 2014 first-year player draft, the Philadelphia Phillies select Aaron Nola, a pitcher from Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana."

"Called it." Rhys's dad says, matter-of-factly.

Rhys stares, and he thinks about Aaron in a way he's not thought about Aaron for three years. He thinks about Aaron, almost grown into his face and wide shoulders, sitting next to his brother, watching himself be drafted. Thinks about how it must feel to him, that kind of glory— wonders what kind of person he's become: if he's reverted to the quiet boy he'd met as a seemingly so much younger boy near a beach in Massachusetts, or if he'd become more like the Aaron he'd come to know that summer, laid back and mischievous, or if he'd turned into someone else entirely, molded by dorms and team parties.

Well, Rhys's phone rings the next day, during the fifth round.

His dad stops cooking, his sister runs over from her room.  
142nd overall pick.

When the commotion is over, he scrolls his phone's Contacts app and finds a number that had stayed untouched for a long time.

_Hey, Aaron._ he types. _"Congrats. See you at Spring Training some time, I guess."_

The response comes five minutes later.

_Hey, congrats to you too... I'll be looking forwards to it, can't come soon enough_

Rhys has no idea what lies ahead, but the text makes his heart race in his chest in a way it hadn't for a long time, something that smells of salt and pine, of grilled fish and wet wood.  
Emerging through the fog, Aaron reappears, finally within his reach again.

Here's how it happens.  
The call comes in early June, and Rhys doesn't need any magic to take the step forward, this time.

**Author's Note:**

> Please do leave a comment if you liked this!! I read all of them and reread them regularly! It means so much!  
  
This was NOT supposed to get so long but I kept having more things to say. I've been workshopping this since July and writing it since August, so YEAH
> 
> This sprung from an idea g and j workshopped for a Rockies teenage summer love fic which I took inspiration from, so thanks to them. I added the CCBL backdrop because I was inspired by a Players' Tribune article about it and had seen a couple videos of Aaron pitching for Harwich on Youtube.
> 
> Let's clear the facts up: Aaron and Rhys both played on the Cape, but for different teams and different years.  
Aaron played as a freshman for Harwich in 2012, but only for three starts, because LSU imposed an inning limit on him like they do most of their young pitchers. After that (so, a couple weeks), he went home.  
Rhys, for himself, played for Falmouth the following year in 2013 and was a Western Division all-star. 
> 
> I based this on the 2012 season, and included some elements from the 2013 season. This is thoroughly researched because I'm a nutcase of a man. For an idea of the atmosphere I'm talking about, check out this [Players' Tribune photo gallery.](https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/cape-cod-league-baseball-photo-galery)
> 
> This was written while overplaying Vampire Weekend's self-titled which really banks on the Cape Cod aesthetic.


End file.
